I Have Tolerated Enough Quotes

Civilized people must, I believe, satisfy the following criteria: 1) They respect human beings as individuals and are therefore always tolerant, gentle, courteous and amenable ... They do not create scenes over a hammer or a mislaid eraser; they do not make you feel they are conferring a great benefit on you when they live with you, and they don't make a scandal when they leave. (...) 2) They have compassion for other people besides beggars and cats. Their hearts suffer the pain of what is hidden to the naked eye. (...) 3) They respect other people's property, and therefore pay their debts. 4) They are not devious, and they fear lies as they fear fire. They don't tell lies even in the most trivial matters. To lie to someone is to insult them, and the liar is diminished in the eyes of the person he lies to. Civilized people don't put on airs; they behave in the street as they would at home, they don't show off to impress their juniors. (...) 5) They don't run themselves down in order to provoke the sympathy of others. They don't play on other people's heartstrings to be sighed over and cosseted ... that sort of thing is just cheap striving for effects, it's vulgar, old hat and false. (...) 6) They are not vain. They don't waste time with the fake jewellery of hobnobbing with celebrities, being permitted to shake the hand of a drunken [judicial orator], the exaggerated bonhomie of the first person they meet at the Salon, being the life and soul of the bar ... They regard prases like 'I am a representative of the Press!!' -- the sort of thing one only hears from [very minor journalists] -- as absurd. If they have done a brass farthing's work they don't pass it off as if it were 100 roubles' by swanking about with their portfolios, and they don't boast of being able to gain admission to places other people aren't allowed in (...) True talent always sits in the shade, mingles with the crowd, avoids the limelight ... As Krylov said, the empty barrel makes more noise than the full one. (...) 7) If they do possess talent, they value it ... They take pride in it ... they know they have a responsibility to exert a civilizing influence on [others] rather than aimlessly hanging out with them. And they are fastidious in their habits. (...) 8) They work at developing their aesthetic sensibility ... Civilized people don't simply obey their baser instincts ... they require mens sana in corpore sano. And so on. That's what civilized people are like ... Reading Pickwick and learning a speech from Faust by heart is not enough if your aim is to become a truly civilized person and not to sink below the level of your surroundings. [From a letter to Nikolay Chekhov, March 1886]

I am strong, yes. But being strong doesn’t mean never getting hurt. It means having a high pain tolerance. I’m not dumb enough to amp it up.

I should probably warn you that I’m not real big on fairness and I have a below-zero tolerance on most things. Do your job. Do it right and we won’t have any problems. Fuck up and I’ll most likely kill you. Fuck up bad enough and I’ll torture you first. (Thorn)

I have tolerated the deceitful and the malicious for long enough. My sword shall now answer them.

There may be humane masters, as there certainly are inhuman ones—there may be slaves well-clothed, well-fed, and happy, as there surely are those half-clad, half-starved and miserable; nevertheless, the institution that tolerates such wrong and inhumanity as I have witnessed, is a cruel, unjust, and barbarous one. Men may write fictions portraying lowly life as it is, or as it is not—may expatiate with owlish gravity upon the bliss of ignorance—discourse flippantly from arm chairs of the pleasures of slave life; but let them toil with him in the field—sleep with him in the cabin—feed with him on husks; let them behold him scourged, hunted, trampled on, and they will come back with another story in their mouths. Let them know the heart of the poor slave—learn his secret thoughts—thoughts he dare not utter in the hearing of the white man; let them sit by him in the silent watches of the night—converse with him in trustful confidence, of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and they will find that ninety-nine out of every hundred are intelligent enough to understand their situation, and to cherish in their bosoms the love of freedom, as passionately as themselves.

Bad music is a form of murder to the true art of music in general.Bad music forced on a child is abuse because it invariably forms that child´s taste in music. Bad music has raped an industry that was held up strongly by great expression for decades but now finds itself floundering, giving in to the lowest common denominator of music just to keep its panties around its waist. Bad music tortures the eardrums and kills little bits of your senses through prolonged exposure. Bad music steals money from shallow pockets, steals airtime from more deserving bands and songwriters, and steals the spotlight from undiscovered geniuses who have all but given up on a dream because of the mediocrity of popular radio. Bad music is a lie, and yet it is foisted on the public in an attempt to turn melodies and songs into hamburgers and fries. Bad music is truly a sin because you don´t have to be exceptional to make it in the music industry anymore. You just have to be good enough to stick around and be tolerated. I understand that bad music is a matter of opinion. I know that. But I am fairly confident that more people agree with me than you suspect. Bad music is just fucking bad.

I have often noticed that these things, which obsess me, neither bother nor impress other people even slightly. I am horribly apt to approach some innocent at a gathering, and like the ancient mariner, fix him with a wild, glitt’ring eye and say, “Do you know that in the head of the caterpillar of the ordinary goat moth there are two hundred twenty-eight separate muscles?” The poor wretch flees. I am not making chatter; I mean to change his life.

The kind of people I absolutely cannot tolerate are those who never let you forget they are religious. It seems to me that a truly religious person would let his life be example enough, would not let his religion interfere with being a human being, and would not be so insecure as to have to fawn publicly before his gods.

The author says those who often claim to be tolerant are tolerant of those who agree with them – which is no one's definition of tolerance.

You make concessions when you're married a long time that you don't believe you'll ever make when you're beginning. You say to yourself when you're young, oh, I wouldn't tolerate this or that or the other thing, you say love is the most important thing in the world and there's only one kind of love and it makes you feel different than you feel the rest of the time, like you're all lit up. But time goes by and you've slept together a thousand nights and smelled like spit-up when babies are sick and seen your body droop and get soft. And some nights you say to yourself, it's not enough, I won't put up with another minute. And then the next morning you wake up and the kitchen smells like coffee and the children have their hair all brushed and the birds are eating out of the feeder and you look at your husband and he's not the person you used to think he was but he's your life. The house and the children and so much more of what you do is built around him and your life, too, your history. If you take him out it's like cutting his face out of all the pictures, there's a big hole and it's ugly. It would ruin everything. It's more than love, it's more important than love... It's hard. And it's hard to understand unless you're in it. And it's hard for you to understand now because of where you are and what you're feeling. But I wanted to say it...because I won't be able to say it when I need to, when it's one of those nights and you're locking the front door because of foolishness about romance, about how things are supposed to be. You can be hard, and you can be judgmental, and with those two things alone you can make a mess of your life the likes of which you won't believe. It's so much easier...the being happy. It's so much easier, to learn to love what you have instead of yearning always for what you're missing, or what you imagine you're missing. It's so much more peaceful.

I want to think about trees. Trees have a curious relationship to the subject of the present moment. There are many created things in the universe that outlive us, that outlive the sun, even, but I can’t think about them. I live with trees. There are creatures under our feet, creatures that live over our heads, but trees live quite convincingly in the same filament of air we inhabit, and in addition, they extend impressively in both directions, up and down, shearing rock and fanning air, doing their real business just out of reach.

Having to worry about whether someone is healthy enough to tolerate my fierce hatred or criticism before I decide to blame them - that's what I call getting old.

You can hardly walk up to complete strangers and say, "Good for you! You've risked banishment and brutality and ostracism just to be together, and I applaud your choice! You're in the vanguard of social change, and even though it's hard on you, the generations that come after you will have an easier time of it because you were brave enough to fall in love." So instead I told them I liked their baby. It means the same thing, but it's more socially acceptable.

The cases described in this section (The Fear of Being) may seem extreme, but I have become convinced that they are not as uncommon as one would think. Beneath the seemingly rational exterior of our lives is a fear of insanity. We dare not question the values by which we live or rebel against the roles we play for fear of putting our sanity into doubt. We are like the inmates of a mental institution who must accept its inhumanity and insensitivity as caring and knowledgeableness if they hope to be regarded as sane enough to leave. The question who is sane and who is crazy was the theme of the novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. The question, what is sanity? was clearly asked in the play Equus. The idea that much of what we do is insane and that if we want to be sane, we must let ourselves go crazy has been strongly advanced by R.D. Laing. In the preface to the Pelican edition of his book The Divided Self, Laing writes: "In the context of our present pervasive madness that we call normality, sanity, freedom, all of our frames of reference are ambiguous and equivocal." And in the same preface: "Thus I would wish to emphasize that our 'normal' 'adjusted' state is too often the abdication of ecstasy, the betrayal of our true potentialities; that many of us are only too successful in acquiring a false self to adapt to false realities." Wilhelm Reich had a somewhat similar view of present-day human behavior. Thus Reich says, "Homo normalis blocks off entirely the perception of basic orgonotic functioning by means of rigid armoring; in the schizophrenic, on the other hand, the armoring practically breaks down and thus the biosystem is flooded with deep experiences from the biophysical core with which it cannot cope." The "deep experiences" to which Reich refers are the pleasurable streaming sensations associated with intense excitation that is mainly sexual in nature. The schizophrenic cannot cope with these sensations because his body is too contracted to tolerate the charge. Unable to "block" the excitation or reduce it as a neurotic can, and unable to "stand" the charge, the schizophrenic is literally "driven crazy." But the neurotic does not escape so easily either. He avoids insanity by blocking the excitation, that is, by reducing it to a point where there is no danger of explosion, or bursting. In effect the neurotic undergoes a psychological castration. However, the potential for explosive release is still present in his body, although it is rigidly guarded as if it were a bomb. The neurotic is on guard against himself, terrified to let go of his defenses and allow his feelings free expression. Having become, as Reich calls him, "homo normalis," having bartered his freedom and ecstasy for the security of being "well adjusted," he sees the alternative as "crazy." And in a sense he is right. Without going "crazy," without becoming "mad," so mad that he could kill, it is impossible to give up the defenses that protect him in the same way that a mental institution protects its inmates from self-destruction and the destruction of others.

you need to check that tone, boy. Remember, I used to kill people for a living, and I ain't been up long enough to have much tolerance right about now. knock it down a notch before I forget I'm supposed to actually like you.

And my mama drowned the dumb ones. I hear everything you’re saying. There’s a group of Buffys thinking we’re the bad guys. Ain’t my first rodeo, pup. It’s been happening so long, they were called Helsings long before your daddy was a gleam in your granddaddy’s eyes. Thank you, Hollywood and Stoker for that. Not like being undead didn’t suck before. They just made it worse for us by cluing the rest of the world in that we exist. Now every goth with a thirst for immortality is cruising for us, begging us to bite them, and turn them. Did I ever tell you about that time when–” – Sundown “Sundown! I–” – Andy “You need to check that tone, boy. Remember, I used to kill people for a living, and I ain’t been up long enough to have much tolerance right about now. Knock it down a notch before I forget that I’m supposed to actually like you.” – Sundown

If someone hurt you or made you cry, the last thing in the world you ever have to say is sorry. My wish for all of you is to respect yourself enough that you never tolerate mistreatment or pain. It begins with you. You deserve more and I know you know it, too.

Having to worry about whether someone is healthy enough to tolerate my fierce hatred or criticism before I decide to blame them – that’s what I call getting old.

In politics not only are leaders lacking, but the independence of spirit and the sense of justice of the citizen have to a great extent declined. The democratic, parliamentarian regime, which is based on such independence, has in many places been shaken, dictatorships have sprung up and are tolerated, because men’s sense of the dignity and the rights of the individual is no longer strong enough. In two weeks the sheep-like masses can be worked up by the newspapers into such a state of excited fury that the men are prepared to put on uniform and kill and be killed, for the sake of the worthless aims of a few interested parties.

There may be humane masters, as there certainly are inhuman ones—there may be slaves well-clothed, well-fed, and happy, as there surely are those half-clad, half-starved and miserable; nevertheless, the institution that tolerates such wrong and inhumanity as I have witnessed, is a cruel, unjust, and barbarous one. Men may write fictions portraying lowly life as it is, or as it is not—may expatiate with owlish gravity upon the bliss of ignorance—discourse flippantly from arm chairs of the pleasures of slave life; but let them toil with him in the field—sleep with him in the cabin—feed with him on husks; let them behold him scourged, hunted, trampled on, and they will come back with another story in their mouths. Let them know the heart of the poor slave—learn his secret thoughts—thoughts he dare not utter in the hearing of the white man; let them sit by him in the silent watches of the night—converse with him in trustful confidence, of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and they will find that ninety-nine out of every hundred are intelligent enough to understand their situation, and to cherish in their bosoms the love of freedom, as passionately as themselves.

When we reach the wall, we can discuss your future,” Elian says. I clench my fists, appalled at his audacity and the fact that I’m being forced to tolerate it. Never the queen, always the minion. “Discuss it?” I repeat. “You said you wanted to come with us, and I want to make sure you’re useful. You can’t just be a prisoner taking up space on my deck.” “I was belowdecks,” I remind him. “In a cage.” “That was this morning,” he says, as though it’s far enough in the past to be forgotten. “Try not to hold a grudge.” The grin he gives me is beyond taunting and I sneer, not deigning to reply. Instead I breeze past and make sure to knock my shoulder as hard as I can into his. The sooner I have his heart, the better.

Everyone at school has their little group. Even the people nobody likes seem to tolerate each together enough to sit together at lunch. But I just sort of wander around by myself most of the time. It'd almost be better if I thought no one liked me, if I had some weird tick or social inadequacy that could easily explain my alienation, but it's not that easy. People talk to me at school and invite me to parties, but something's missing on the smaller scale. I don't belong to anybody. I don't have anyone who is mine.

And in our culture today, tolerance no longer means to put up with something you believe to be false (after all, you don’t tolerate things you agree with). Tolerance now means that you’re supposed to accept every belief as true!

Clicking on "send" has its limitations as a system of subtle communication. Which is why, of course, people use so many dashes and italics and capitals ("I AM joking!") to compensate. That's why they came up with the emoticon, too—the emoticon being the greatest (or most desperate, depending how you look at it) advance in punctuation since the question mark in the reign of Charlemagne. You will know all about emoticons. Emoticons are the proper name for smileys. And a smiley is, famously, this: :—) Forget the idea of selecting the right words in the right order and channelling the reader's attention by means of artful pointing. Just add the right emoticon to your email and everyone will know what self-expressive effect you thought you kind-of had in mind. Anyone interested in punctuation has a dual reason to feel aggrieved about smileys, because not only are they a paltry substitute for expressing oneself properly; they are also designed by people who evidently thought the punctuation marks on the standard keyboard cried out for an ornamental function. What's this dot-on-top-of-a-dot thing for? What earthly good is it? Well, if you look at it sideways, it could be a pair of eyes. What's this curvy thing for? It's a mouth, look! Hey, I think we're on to something. :—( Now it's sad! ;—) It looks like it's winking! :—r It looks like it's sticking its tongue out! The permutations may be endless: :~/ mixed up! <:—) dunce! :—[ pouting! :—O surprise! Well, that's enough. I've just spotted a third reason to loathe emoticons, which is that when they pass from fashion (and I do hope they already have), future generations will associate punctuation marks with an outmoded and rather primitive graphic pastime and despise them all the more. "Why do they still have all these keys with things like dots and spots and eyes and mouths and things?" they will grumble. "Nobody does smileys any more.

Everyone at school has their little group. Even the people nobody likes seem to tolerate each other enough to sit together at lunch. But I just sort of wander around by myself most of the time. It'd almost be better if I thought no one liked me, if I had some weird tick or social inadequacy that could easily explain my alienation, but it's not that easy. People talk to me at school and invite me to parties, but something's missing on the smaller scale. I don't belong to anybody. I don't have anyone who is mine.

Well, as we know, I am not tolerable enough to tempt you, so I suppose I would have to recommend Jane, as she is the renowned local beauty. If she fails to entice you, sir, you will need to remove to a new county to find a partner worthy of your consideration.

I can't exactly say why I've chosen to write about the things that I am writing about. There are doubtless better stories from my life that I am missing, events and escapades I am not wise enough to know were important. If heaven is tolerant and writers are allowed (bunch of liars that they are), I wonder if they gather for coffee to ponder the prose they should have written instead. p 179

...what man is capable of the insane self-conceit of believing that an eternity of himself would be tolerable even to himself? Those who try to believe it postulate that they shall be made perfect first. But if you make me perfect I shall no longer be myself, nor will it be possible for me to conceive my present imperfections (and what I cannot conceive I cannot remember); so that you may just as well give me a new name and face the fact that I am a new person and that the old Bernard Shaw is as dead as mutton. Thus,oddly enough, the conventional belief in the matter comes to this: that if you wish to live for ever you must be wicked enough to be irretrievably damned, since the saved are no longer what they were, and in hell alone do people retain their sinful nature: that is to say, their individuality. And this sort of hell, however convenient as a means of intimidating persons who have practically no honor and no conscience, is not a fact.

Let us look one another in the face. We are Hyperboreans—we know well enough how much out of the way we live. 'Neither by land nor sea shalt thou find the road to the Hyperboreans': Pindar already knew that of us. Beyond the North, beyond the ice, beyond death—our life, our happiness.... We have discovered happiness, we know the road, we have found the exit out of whole millennia of labyrinth. Who else has found it? Modern man perhaps? 'I know not which way to turn; I am everything that knows not which way to turn,' sighs modern man.... It was from this modernity that we were ill—from lazy peace, from cowardly compromise, from the whole virtuous uncleanliness of modern Yes and No. This tolerance and largeur of heart which 'forgives' everything because it 'Understands' everything is sirocco to us. Better to live among ice than among modern virtues and other south winds! ...We were brave enough, we spared neither ourselves nor others: but for long we did not know where to apply our courage. We became gloomy, we were called fatalists. Our fatality—was the plenitude, the tension, the blocking-up of our forces. We thirsted for lightning and action, of all things we kept ourselves furthest from the happiness of the weaklings, from 'resignation'.... There was a thunderstorm in our air, the nature which we are grew dark—for we had no road. Formula of our happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal...

A kind of northing is what I wish to accomplish, a single-minded trek towards that place where any shutter left open to the zenith at night will record the wheeling of all the sky’s stars as a pattern of perfect, concentric circles. I seek a reduction, a shedding, a sloughing off. At the seashore you often see a shell, or fragment of a shell, that sharp sands and surf have thinned to a wisp. There is no way you can tell what kind of shell it had been, what creature it had housed; it could have been a whelk or a scallop, a cowrie, limpet, or conch. The animal is long since dissolved, and its blood spread and thinned in the general sea. All you hold in your hand is a cool shred of shell, an inch long, pared so thin that it passes a faint pink light. It is an essence, a smooth condensation of the air, a curve. I long for the North where unimpeded winds would hone me to such a pure slip of bone. But I’ll not go northing this year. I’ll stalk that floating pole and frigid air by waiting here. I wait on bridges; I wait, struck, on forest paths and meadow’s fringes, hilltops and banksides, day in and day out, and I receive a southing as a gift. The North washes down the mountains like a waterfall, like a tidal wave, and pours across the valley; it comes to me. It sweetens the persimmons and numbs the last of the crickets and hornets; it fans the flames of the forest maples, bows the meadow’s seeded grasses and pokes it chilling fingers under the leaf litter, thrusting the springtails and the earthworms deeper into the earth. The sun heaves to the south by day, and at night wild Orion emerges looming like the Specter over Dead Man Mountain. Something is already here, and more is coming.

What was it you called me? Hell’s overlord who wields his lucky pen like it’s… what was that last part?” Enough! Elise’s tolerance disappeared in a sulfurous cloud of smoke. “Hell’s overlord who wields his lucky pen like it’s his staff of masculinity,” she ground out, then lowered her head and furiously pounded on the laptop’s keyboard. Luc laughed and the hairs at the nape of her neck prickled. “Staff of masculinity. How could I have forgotten that? You could have just said—” Her cheeks burned red hot. “I made that up before I knew you liked to beat your lucky pen against the desk.” He turned in his seat and smiled the smile that never failed to raise her body temperature a hundred degrees. “And it was that particular phrase which made your habit of sucking on pen caps all the more bearable.” She glared at him and his smile widened. “Don’t make me get up and come near your desk, Lucien Masters.” “Getting up and coming near my desk are the least of my worries,” he replied in a husky, Southern rumble.

everything. I would never want depression to be a public or political excuse, but I think that once you have gone through it, you get a greater and more immediate understanding of the temporary absence of judgment that makes people behave so badly—you learn even, perhaps, how to tolerate the evil in the world.” On the happy day when we lose depression, we will lose a great deal with it. If the earth could feed itself and us without rain, and if we conquered the weather and declared permanent sun, would we not miss grey days and summer storms? As the sun seems brighter and more clear when it comes on a rare day of English summer after ten months of dismal skies than it can ever seem in the tropics, so recent happiness feels enormous and embracing and beyond anything I have ever imagined. Curiously enough, I love my depression. I do not love experiencing my depression, but I love the depression itself. I love who I am in the wake of it. Schopenhauer said, “Man is [content] according to how dull and insensitive he is”; Tennessee Williams, asked for the definition of happiness, replied “insensitivity.” I do not agree with them. Since I have been to the Gulag and survived it, I know that if I have to go to the Gulag again, I could survive that also; I’m more confident in some odd way than I’ve ever imagined being. This almost (but not quite) makes the depression seem worth it. I do not think that I will ever again try to kill myself; nor do I think

once there was a beautiful young panther who had a co-wife and a husband. Her name was Lara and she was unhappy because her husband and her co-wife were really in love; being nice to her was merely a duty panther society imposed on them. They had not even wanted to take her into their marriage as co-wife, since there were already perfectly happy. But she was an "extra" female in the group and that would not do. Her husband sometimes sniffed her breath and other emanations. He even, sometimes, made love to her. but whenever this happened, the co-wife, whose name was Lala, became upset. She and the husband, Baba, would argue, then fight, snarling and biting and whipping at each other's eyes with their tails. Pretty soon they'd become sick of this and would lie clutched in each other's paws, weeping. I am supposed to make love to her, Baba would say to Lala, his heartchosen mate. She is my wife just as you are. I did not plan things this way. This is the arrangement that came down to me. I know it, dearest, said Lala, through her tears. And this pain that I feel is what has come down to me. Surely it can't be right? These two sat on a rock in the forest and were miserable enough. But Lara, the unwanted, pregnant by now and ill, was devastated. Everyone knew she was unloved, and no other female panther wanted to share her own husband with her. Days went by when the only voice she heard was her inner one. Soon, she began to listen to it. Lara, it said, sit here, where the sun may kiss you. And she did. Lara, it said, lie here, where the moon can make love to you all night long. and she did. Lara, it said, one bright morning when she knew herself to have been well kissed and well loved: sit here on this stone and look at your beautiful self in the still waters of this stream. Calmed by the guidance offered by her inner voice, Lara sat down on the stone and leaned over the water. She took in her smooth, aubergine little snout, her delicate, pointed ears, her sleek, gleeming black fur. She was beautiful! And she was well kissed by the sun and well made love to by the moon. For one whole day, Lara was content. When her co-wife asked her fearfully why she was smiling, Lara only opened her mouth wider, in a grin. The poor co-wife ran trembling off and found their husband, Baba, and dragged him back to look at Lara. When Baba saw the smiling, well kissed, well made love to Lara, of course he could hardly wait to get his paws on her! He could tell she was in love with someone else, and this aroused all his passion. While Lala wept, Baba possessed Lara, who was looking over his shoulder at the moon. Each day it seemed to Lara that the Lara in the stream was the only Lara worth having - so beautiful, so well kissed, and so well made love to. And her inner voice assured her this was true. So, one hot day when she could not tolerate the shrieks and groans of Baba and Lala as they tried to tear each other's ears off because of her, Lara, who by now was quite indifferent to them both, leaned over and kissed her own serene reflection in the water, and held the kiss all the way to the bottom of the stream.

I said to myself ‘what the hell,’” she reported “and started to get on with it in my part of the country.”15 Fortunately, such insubordination was tolerated, even encouraged, by Wild Bill Donovan, who liked to say, “I’d rather have a young lieutenant with guts enough to disobey an order than a colonel too regimented to think and act for himself.”16 But it was an unusual move for a woman.

There may be humane masters, as there certainly are inhuman ones—there may be slaves well-clothed, well-fed, and happy, as there surely are those half-clad, half-starved and miserable; nevertheless, the institution that tolerates such wrong and inhumanity as I have witnessed, is a cruel, unjust, and barbarous one. Men may write fictions portraying lowly life as it is, or as it is not—may expatiate with owlish gravity upon the bliss of ignorance—discourse flippantly from arm chairs of the pleasures of slave life; but let them toil with him in the field—sleep with him in the cabin—feed with him on husks; let them behold him scourged, hunted, trampled on, and they will come back with another story in their mouths. Let them know the heart of the poor slave—learn his secret thoughts—thoughts he dare not utter in the hearing of the white man; let them sit by him in the silent watches of the night—converse with him in trustful confidence, of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and they will find that ninety-nine out of every hundred are intelligent enough to understand their situation, and to cherish in their bosoms the love of freedom, as passionately as themselves.

What if a zombie came in,reeking of death and decay? He'd totally go for te Vicious Redhead Soccer Girl sitting right by the door.I could take a zombie. That ruler on the teacher's desk looked like a sharp edge,and how cool would my classmates think I was? Especially if I had Tasey. I sighed,leaning my head back and staring up at the ceiling.It would never work. No ruler would be sharp enough. Besides which,I never bring Tasey to school.And even if I saved everyone in the class,I'd probably still be expelled due to the school's zero tolerance policy on violence. I'd just have to live without the everlasting appreciation and admiration of my classmates.

despair threatens to overwhelm me.i have no life. my friends only tolerate me, they don't really like me. i'm just useful to have around. if i wasn't here they wouldn't really miss me. i am not important, not popular enough.

There is nothing more beautiful than goodness and it has pleased me very often to show how much of it there is in persons who by common standards would be relentlessly condemned. It has seemed to me sometimes to shine more brightly in them because it was surrounded by the darkness of sin. I take the goodness of the good for granted and I am amused when I discover their defects or their vices; I am touched when I see the goodness of the wicked and I am willing enough to shrug a tolerant shoulder at their wickedness. My observation has led me to believe that, all in all, there is not so much difference between the good and the bad as the moralists would have us believe.

In your whole life nobody has ever abused you more than you have abused yourself. And the limit of your self-abuse is exactly the limit that you will tolerate from someone else. If someone abuses you a little more than you abuse yourself, you will probably walk away from that person. But if someone abuses you a little less than you abuse yourself, you will probably stay in the relationship and tolerate it endlessly. If you abuse yourself very badly, you can even tolerate someone who beats you up, humiliates you, and treats you like dirt. Why? Because in your belief system you say, "I deserve it. This person is doing me a favor by being with me. I'm not worthy of love and respect. I'm not good enough.

DEAR MAMA, I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to write. Every time I try to write to you and Papa I realize I’m not saying the things that are in my heart. That would be O.K., if I loved you any less than I do, but you are still my parents and I am still your child. I have friends who think I’m foolish to write this letter. I hope they’re wrong. I hope their doubts are based on parents who loved and trusted them less than mine do. I hope especially that you’ll see this as an act of love on my part, a sign of my continuing need to share my life with you. I wouldn’t have written, I guess, if you hadn’t told me about your involvement in the Save Our Children campaign. That, more than anything, made it clear that my responsibility was to tell you the truth, that your own child is homosexual, and that I never needed saving from anything except the cruel and ignorant piety of people like Anita Bryant. I’m sorry, Mama. Not for what I am, but for how you must feel at this moment. I know what that feeling is, for I felt it for most of my life. Revulsion, shame, disbelief—rejection through fear of something I knew, even as a child, was as basic to my nature as the color of my eyes. No, Mama, I wasn’t “recruited.” No seasoned homosexual ever served as my mentor. But you know what? I wish someone had. I wish someone older than me and wiser than the people in Orlando had taken me aside and said, “You’re all right, kid. You can grow up to be a doctor or a teacher just like anyone else. You’re not crazy or sick or evil. You can succeed and be happy and find peace with friends—all kinds of friends—who don’t give a damn who you go to bed with. Most of all, though, you can love and be loved, without hating yourself for it.” But no one ever said that to me, Mama. I had to find it out on my own, with the help of the city that has become my home. I know this may be hard for you to believe, but San Francisco is full of men and women, both straight and gay, who don’t consider sexuality in measuring the worth of another human being. These aren’t radicals or weirdos, Mama. They are shop clerks and bankers and little old ladies and people who nod and smile to you when you meet them on the bus. Their attitude is neither patronizing nor pitying. And their message is so simple: Yes, you are a person. Yes, I like you. Yes, it’s all right for you to like me too. I know what you must be thinking now. You’re asking yourself: What did we do wrong? How did we let this happen? Which one of us made him that way? I can’t answer that, Mama. In the long run, I guess I really don’t care. All I know is this: If you and Papa are responsible for the way I am, then I thank you with all my heart, for it’s the light and the joy of my life. I know I can’t tell you what it is to be gay. But I can tell you what it’s not. It’s not hiding behind words, Mama. Like family and decency and Christianity. It’s not fearing your body, or the pleasures that God made for it. It’s not judging your neighbor, except when he’s crass or unkind. Being gay has taught me tolerance, compassion and humility. It has shown me the limitless possibilities of living. It has given me people whose passion and kindness and sensitivity have provided a constant source of strength. It has brought me into the family of man, Mama, and I like it here. I like it. There’s not much else I can say, except that I’m the same Michael you’ve always known. You just know me better now. I have never consciously done anything to hurt you. I never will. Please don’t feel you have to answer this right away. It’s enough for me to know that I no longer have to lie to the people who taught me to value the truth. Mary Ann sends her love. Everything is fine at 28 Barbary Lane. Your loving son, MICHAEL

In the course of my life I have had pre-pubescent ballerinas; emaciated duchesses, dolorous and forever tired, melomaniac and morphine-sodden; bankers' wives with eyes hollower than those of suburban streetwalkers; music-hall chorus girls who tip creosote into their Roederer when getting drunk... I have even had the awkward androgynes, the unsexed dishes of the day of the *tables d'hote* of Montmartre. Like any vulgar follower of fashion, like any member of the herd, I have made love to bony and improbably slender little girls, frightened and macabre, spiced with carbolic and peppered with chlorotic make-up. Like an imbecile, I have believed in the mouths of prey and sacrificial victims. Like a simpleton, I have believed in the large lewd eyes of a ragged heap of sickly little creatures: alcoholic and cynical shop girls and whores. The profundity of their eyes and the mystery of their mouths... the jewellers of some and the manicurists of others furnish them with *eaux de toilette*, with soaps and rouges. And Fanny the etheromaniac, rising every morning for a measured dose of cola and coca, does not put ether only on her handkerchief. It is all fakery and self-advertisement - *truquage and battage*, as their vile argot has it. Their phosphorescent rottenness, their emaciated fervour, their Lesbian blight, their shop-sign vices set up to arouse their clients, to excite the perversity of young and old men alike in the sickness of perverse tastes! All of it can sparkle and catch fire only at the hour when the gas is lit in the corridors of the music-halls and the crude nickel-plated decor of the bars. Beneath the cerise three-ply collars of the night-prowlers, as beneath the bulging silks of the cyclist, the whole seductive display of passionate pallor, of knowing depravity, of exhausted and sensual anaemia - all the charm of spicy flowers celebrated in the writings of Paul Bourget and Maurice Barres - is nothing but a role carefully learned and rehearsed a hundred times over. It is a chapter of the MANCHON DE FRANCINE read over and over again, swotted up and acted out by ingenious barnstormers, fully conscious of the squalid salacity of the male of the species, and knowledgeable in the means of starting up the broken-down engines of their customers. To think that I also have loved these maleficent and sick little beasts, these fake Primaveras, these discounted Jocondes, the whole hundred-franc stock-in-trade of Leonardos and Botticellis from the workshops of painters and the drinking-dens of aesthetes, these flowers mounted on a brass thread in Montparnasse and Levallois-Perret! And the odious and tiresome travesty - the corsetted torso slapped on top of heron's legs, painful to behold, the ugly features primed by boulevard boxes, the fake Dresden of Nina Grandiere retouched from a medicine bottle, complaining and spectral at the same time - of Mademoiselle Guilbert and her long black gloves!... Have I now had enough of the horror of this nightmare! How have I been able to tolerate it for so long? The fact is that I was then ignorant even of the nature of my sickness. It was latent in me, like a fire smouldering beneath the ashes. I have cherished it since... perhaps since early childhood, for it must always have been in me, although I did not know it!

You may find that you have been telling yourself that practicing optimism is a risk, as though, somehow, a positive attitude will invite disaster and so if you practice optimism it may increase your feelings of vulnerability. The trick is to increase your tolerance for vulnerable feelings, rather than avoid them altogether. […] Optimism does not mean continual happiness, glazed eyes and a fixed grin. When I talk about the desirability of optimism I do not mean that we should delude ourselves about reality. But practicing optimism does mean focusing more on the positive fall-out of an event than on the negative. … I am not advocating the kind of optimism that means you blow all your savings on a horse running at a hundred to one; I am talking about being optimistic enough to sow some seeds in the hope that some of them will germinate and grow into flowers.

But Rousseau — to what did he really want to return? Rousseau, this first modern man, idealist and rabble in one person — one who needed moral "dignity" to be able to stand his own sight, sick with unbridled vanity and unbridled self-contempt. This miscarriage, couched on the threshold of modern times, also wanted a "return to nature"; to ask this once more, to what did Rousseau want to return? I still hate Rousseau in the French Revolution: it is the world-historical expression of this duality of idealist and rabble. The bloody farce which became an aspect of the Revolution, its "immorality," is of little concern to me: what I hate is its Rousseauan morality — the so-called "truths" of the Revolution through which it still works and attracts everything shallow and mediocre. The doctrine of equality! There is no more poisonous poison anywhere: for it seems to be preached by justice itself, whereas it really is the termination of justice. "Equal to the equal, unequal to the unequal" — that would be the true slogan of justice; and also its corollary: "Never make equal what is unequal." That this doctrine of equality was surrounded by such gruesome and bloody events, that has given this "modern idea" par excellence a kind of glory and fiery aura so that the Revolution as a spectacle has seduced even the noblest spirits. In the end, that is no reason for respecting it any more. I see only one man who experienced it as it must be experienced, with nausea — Goethe. Goethe — not a German event, but a European one: a magnificent attempt to overcome the eighteenth century by a return to nature, by an ascent to the naturalness of the Renaissance — a kind of self-overcoming on the part of that century. He bore its strongest instincts within himself: the sensibility, the idolatry of nature, the anti-historic, the idealistic, the unreal and revolutionary (the latter being merely a form of the unreal). He sought help from history, natural science, antiquity, and also Spinoza, but, above all, from practical activity; he surrounded himself with limited horizons; he did not retire from life but put himself into the midst of it; he if was not fainthearted but took as much as possible upon himself, over himself, into himself. What he wanted was totality; he fought the mutual extraneousness of reason, senses, feeling, and will (preached with the most abhorrent scholasticism by Kant, the antipode of Goethe); he disciplined himself to wholeness, he created himself. In the middle of an age with an unreal outlook, Goethe was a convinced realist: he said Yes to everything that was related to him in this respect — and he had no greater experience than that ens realissimum [most real being] called Napoleon. Goethe conceived a human being who would be strong, highly educated, skillful in all bodily matters, self-controlled, reverent toward himself, and who might dare to afford the whole range and wealth of being natural, being strong enough for such freedom; the man of tolerance, not from weakness but from strength, because he knows how to use to his advantage even that from which the average nature would perish; the man for whom there is no longer anything that is forbidden — unless it be weakness, whether called vice or virtue. Such a spirit who has become free stands amid the cosmos with a joyous and trusting fatalism, in the faith that only the particular is loathesome, and that all is redeemed and affirmed in the whole — he does not negate anymore. Such a faith, however, is the highest of all possible faiths: I have baptized it with the name of Dionysus. 50 One might say that in a certain sense the nineteenth century also strove for all that which Goethe as a person had striven for: universality in understanding and in welcoming, letting everything come close to oneself, an audacious realism, a reverence for everything factual.

I shut my eyes and concentrated on the sun, and on feeling it warm my skin. On pleasure. Hedon. The Greek god. Or idol, as he should probably be called seeing as I was on hallowed ground. It's pretty arrogant, calling all other gods, apart from the one you've come up with, idols. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Every dictator's command to his subjects, of course. The funny thing was that Christians couldn't see it themselves. They didn't see the mechanism, the regenerative, self-fulfilling, self-aggrandising aspect which meant that a superstition like this could survive for two thousand years, and in which the key--salvation--was restricted to those who were fortunate enough to have been born in a space of time which was a merest blink of the eye in human history, and who also happened to live on the only little bit of the planet that ever got to hear the commandment and were able to formulate an opinion about the concise sales pitch ("Paradise?").

I, Cleo Wilder, do take myself, Cleo Wilder, to be my strongest advocate and my most loyal friend, my loudest cheerleader, and my most trusted confidante.” I pause and gaze out to sea, my palms resting on my knees, my hair swirling around my shoulders in the wind. I acknowledge I haven’t always been my own best friend, and I certainly haven’t always been my own strongest advocate. I’ve lingered too long in toxic relationships, and I’ve told myself to put up with things I’d tell a friend not to tolerate. “I promise to listen to myself, to take the time to hear the voice in my gut, because I know myself better than anyone and I always have my own best interests at heart. I’m wise enough to know when someone is disingenuous, and I know when enough is enough. I also know that I am enough, and I’m brave, and I will succeed. I won’t judge myself too harshly when I get things wrong, because everyone gets things wrong sometimes, but I won’t let myself off the hook without learning lessons either.

If you ask me, everyone is a little too interested in their children’s happiness. Ask anyone what they wish for their kids and they’ll all say they want them to be happy. Happy! Not empathetic contributing members of society. Not humble, wise and tolerant. Not strong in the face of adversity or grateful in the face of misfortune. I, on the other hand, have always wanted hardship for my kids. Real, honest hardship. Challenges big enough to make them empathetic and wise. Take the pregnant refugee girls I deal with every day. They’ve been through unimaginable hardships, and here they are working hard, contributing and grateful. What more could you want for your kids?

speaking – entering into that person’s emotional experience – you have to be able to tolerate those emotions in order to empathize. When we don’t get enough of what we need, when those people we depend upon are unable to empathize with our feelings, we may develop a very limited ability to empathize with the feelings of others as a result.

I have never before considered the feelings of a cow. I suppose they must not care for us at all.’ ‘They are only dumb beasts,’ Laurence said, ‘and such thought surely beyond them. Any animal will defend its life and young, but that is not the same as being a thinking, reasoning creature.’ ‘Only, how could one be certain?’ Temeraire said. ‘After all, if one wishes to be particularly dull, one might be like that fellow Salcombe, and say that dragons are also dumb beasts. And I am quite sure the bunyips are not, though they do not seem to talk at all: they are only nasty thinking creatures. It is not very fair, though, that I should allow them to have sense because they will contrive one unpleasantness after another; what if cows are very clever, only they do not like to make a fuss about it?’ ‘If they dislike fuss enough to tolerate being eaten,’ Laurence said, with rather an amused expression, ‘surely it need not matter one way or another.’ ‘Perhaps they think they will be eaten anyway, as they are so delicious,

My mum’s always giving me a hard time about “making friends,” but she doesn’t get it. It’s not that fucking easy, or remotely entertaining. Why would I put myself out there to get the approval of people I can’t stand, just to feel slightly more important in life? I don’t need friends. I have a small group of people I can slightly tolerate, and that’s more than enough for me.

My darling goddaughter, Olivia, was the little girl of my friends, Max and Jeff. She was turning four, and it was time to transition her from her shortened toddler bed to a full-size big girl bed. It would be the bed where she'd have her childhood dreams and her teenage angst. I wanted it strong enough to tolerate her little girl bouncing and her teenage flouncing. It had to be perfect.

On the "intellectual conscience." — Nothing seems rarer to me today than genuine hypocrisy. I greatly suspect that the soft air of our culture is insalubrious for this plant. Hypocrisy belongs in the ages of strong faith when, even though constrained to display another faith, one did not abandon one's own faith. Today one does abandon it; or, even more commonly, one adds a second faith — and in either case one remains honest. Without a doubt, a very much greater number of convictions is possible today than formerly: "possible" means permissible, which means harmless. This begets tolerance toward oneself. Tolerance toward oneself permits several convictions and they get along with each other: they are careful, like all the rest of the world, not to compromise themselves. How does one compromise oneself today? If one is consistent. If one proceeds in a straight line. If one is not ambiguous enough to permit five conflicting interpretations. If one is genuine. I fear greatly that modern man is simply too comfortable for some vices, so that they die out by default. All evil that is a function of a strong will — and perhaps there is no evil without strength of will — degenerates into virtue in our tepid air. The few hypocrites whom I have met imitated hypocrisy: like almost every tenth person today, they were actors.

M. I’ve never really thought of M objectively before, as another person. She’s always been my mother I’ve hated or been ashamed of. Yet of all the lame ducks I’ve met or heard of, she’s the lamest. I’ve never given her enough sympathy. I haven’t given her this last year (since I left home) one half of the consideration I’ve given the beastly creature upstairs just this last week. I feel that I could overwhelm her with love now. Because I haven’t felt so sorry for her for years. I’ve always excused myself—I’ve said, I’m kind and tolerant with everyone else, she’s the one person I can’t be like that with, and there has to be an exception to the general rule. So it doesn’t matter. But of course that’s wrong. She’s the last person that should be an exception to the general rule. Minny and I have so often despised D for putting up with her. We ought to go down on our knees to him.

I’m convinced that no normal human being ever woke up one morning and said, “Dammit, my life doesn’t have enough petty bureaucratic rules, zero-tolerance policies, censorship, and fear in it. How do I fix that?” Instead, they let this stuff pile up, one compromise at a time, building up huge sores suppurating with spore-loaded fluids that eventually burst free and beslime everything around them. It gets normal to them, one dribble at a time.

In the forty minutes I watched the muskrat, he never saw me, smelled me, or heard me at all. When he was in full view of course I never moved except to breathe. My eyes would move, too, following his, but he never noticed. Only once, when he was feeding from the opposite bank about eight feet away did he suddenly rise upright, all alert- and then he immediately resumed foraging. But he never knew I was there. I never knew I was there, either. For that forty minutes last night I was as purely sensitive and mute as a photographic plate; I received impressions, but I did not print out captions. My own self-awareness had disappeared; it seems now almost as though, had I been wired to electrodes, my EEG would have been flat. I have done this sort of thing so often that I have lost self-consciousness about moving slowly and halting suddenly. And I have often noticed that even a few minutes of this self-forgetfulness is tremendously invigorating. I wonder if we do not waste most of our energy just by spending every waking minute saying hello to ourselves. Martin Buber quotes an old Hasid master who said, “When you walk across the field with your mind pure and holy, then from all the stones, and all growing things, and all animals, the sparks of their souls come out and cling to you, and then they are purified and become a holy fire in you.

It is supposed to be difficult to understand Hegel, but to understand Abraham is a trifle. To go beyond Hegel is a miracle, but to get beyond Abraham is the easiest thing of all. I for my part have devoted a good deal of time to the understanding of the Hegelian philosophy, I believe also that I understand it tolerably well, but when in spite of the trouble I have taken there are certain passages I cannot understand, I am foolhardy enough to think that he himself has not been quite clear. All this I do easily and naturally, my head does not suffer from it. But on the other hand when I have to think of Abraham, I am as though annihilated. I catch sight every moment of that enormous paradox which is the substance of Abraham's life, every moment I am repelled, and my thought in spite of all its passion cannot get a hairs-breadth further. I strain every muscle to get a view of it–that very instant I am paralyzed.

-The world, even the smallest parts of it, is filled with things you don't know. (page 97) -If you let people into your life a little bit, they can be pretty damn amazing. (page 129) -Well, life is a constant struggle between being an individual and being a member of the community. (page 132) -It's okay, Coach said to me, but he was talking to the whole team. If you care about something enough, it's going to make you cry. But you have to use it. Use your tears. Use your pain. Use your fear. Get mad, Arnold, get mad. (page 144) -The quality of a man's life is in direct proportion to his commitment to excellence, regardless of his chosen field of endeavor. (page 148) -My grandmother's last act on earth was a call for forgiveness, love, and tolerance. (page 157) -I used to think the world was broken down by tribes, I said. By black and white. By Indian and white. But I know that isn't true. The world is only broken into two tribes: The people who are assholes and the people who are not. (page 176)

Everyone at school has their little group. Even the people nobody likes seem to tolerate each other enough to sit together at lunch. But I just sort of wander around by myself most of the time. It's almost be better if I thought no one liked me, if I had some weird tick or social inadequacy that cold easily explain my alienation but it's not that easy. People talk to me at school and invite me to parties, but something's missing on the smaller scale. I don't belong to anybody. I don't have anyone who is mine.

You were burning in the middle of the worst solar storm our records can remember. (...) Everyone else fled. All your companions and crew left you alone to wrestle with the storm. “You did not blame them. In a moment of crystal insight, you realized that they were cowards beyond mere cowardice: their dependence on their immortality circuits had made it so that they could not even imagine risking their lives. They were all alike in this respect. They did not know they were not brave; they could not even think of dying as possible; how could they think of facing it, unflinching? “You did not flinch. You knew you were going to die; you knew it when the Sophotechs, who are immune to pain and fear, all screamed and failed and vanished. “And you knew, in that moment of approaching death, with all your life laid out like a single image for you to examine in a frozen moment of time, that no one was immortal, not ultimately, not really. The day may be far away, it may be further away than the dying of the sun, or the extinction of the stars, but the day will come when all our noumenal systems fail, our brilliant machines all pass away, and our records of ourselves and memories shall be lost. “If all life is finite, only the grace and virtue with which it is lived matters, not the length. So you decided to stay another moment, and erect magnetic shields, one by one; to discharge interruption masses into the current, to break up the reinforcement patterns in the storm. Not life but honor mattered to you, Helion: so you stayed a moment after that moment, and then another. (...) “You saw the plasma erupting through shield after shield (...) Chaos was attempting to destroy your life’s work, and major sections of the Solar Array were evaporated. Chaos was attempting to destroy your son’s lifework, and since he was aboard that ship, outside the range of any noumenal circuit, it would have destroyed your son as well. “The Array was safe, but you stayed another moment, to try to deflect the stream of particles and shield your son; circuit after circuit failed, and still you stayed, playing the emergency like a raging orchestra. “When the peak of the storm was passed, it was too late for you: you had stayed too long; the flames were coming. But the radio-static cleared long enough for you to have last words with your son, whom you discovered, to your surprise, you loved better than life itself. In your mind, he was the living image of the best thing in you, the ideal you always wanted to achieve. “ ‘Chaos has killed me, son,’ you said. ‘But the victory of unpredictability is hollow. Men imagine, in their pride, that they can predict life’s each event, and govern nature and govern each other with rules of unyielding iron. Not so. There will always be men like you, my son, who will do the things no one else predicts or can control. I tried to tame the sun and failed; no one knows what is at its fiery heart; but you will tame a thousand suns, and spread mankind so wide in space that no one single chance, no flux of chaos, no unexpected misfortune, will ever have power enough to harm us all. For men to be civilized, they must be unlike each other, so that when chaos comes to claim them, no two will use what strategy the other does, and thus, even in the middle of blind chaos, some men, by sheer blind chance, if nothing else, will conquer. “ ‘The way to conquer the chaos which underlies all the illusionary stable things in life, is to be so free, and tolerant, and so much in love with liberty, that chaos itself becomes our ally; we shall become what no one can foresee; and courage and inventiveness will be the names we call our fearless unpredictability…’ “And you vowed to support Phaethon’s effort, and you died in order that his dream might live.

Third, the prohibition against questioning religious beliefs is also an absolute moral position. Why shouldn’t we question religious beliefs? Would it be immoral to do so? And if so, by whose standard? Do pluralists have any good reasons supporting their belief that we ought not question religious beliefs, or is it just their own personal opinion that they want to impose on the rest of us? Unless they can give us good reasons for such a moral standard, why should we allow them to impose it on us? And why are pluralists trying to impose that moral position on us anyway? That’s not very “tolerant” of them.

In politics not only are leaders lacking, but the independence of spent and the sense of justice of the citizen have to a great extent declined. The democratic, parliamentarian regime, which is based on such independence, has in many places been shaken, dictatorships have sprung up and are tolerated, because men’s sense of the dignity and the rights of the individual is no longer strong enough. In two weeks the sheep-like masses can be worked up by the newspapers into such a state of excited fury that the men are prepared to put on uniform and kill and be billed, for the sake of the worthless aims of a few interested parties. Compulsory military

I wonder if all these bad things will change when I’m a high schooler…” “At the very least, they most certainly won’t change if you intend to remain the way you are.” Way to go, Yukinoshita-san! Not going easy on the young'un just after you finished apologizing to her! “But it’s enough if the people around you change,” I remarked. “There’s no need to force yourself to hang out with others.” “But things are hard on Rumi­-chan right now and if we don’t do something about it…” Yuigahama looked at Rumi with eyes full of concern. In response, Rumi winced slightly. “Hard, you say… I don’t like that. It makes me sound pathetic. It makes me feel inferior for being left out.” “Oh,” said Yuigahama. “I don’t like it, you know. But there’s nothing you can do about it.” “Why?” Yukinoshita questioned her. Rumi seemed to have some trouble speaking, but she still managed to form the right words. “I… got abandoned. I can’t get along with them anymore. Even if I did, I don’t know when it’ll start again. If the same thing were to happen, I guess I’m better off this way. I just­” She swallowed. “­don’t wanna be pathetic…” Oh. I get it. This girl was fed up. Of herself and of her surroundings. If you change yourself, your world will change, they say, but that’s a load of crap. When people already have an impression of you, it’s not easy to change your pre­existing relationships by adding something to the mix. When people evaluate each other, it’s not an addition or subtraction formula. They only perceive you through their preconceived notions. The truth is that people don’t see you as who you truly are. They only see what they want to see, the reality that they yearn for. If some disgusting guy on the low end of the caste works his arse off on something, the higher ones just snicker and say, “What’s he trying so hard for?” and that would be the end of it. If you stand out for the wrong reasons, you would just be fodder for criticism. That wouldn’t be the case in a perfect world, but for better or worse, that’s how things work with middle schoolers. Riajuu are sought for their actions as riajuu, loners are obligated to be loners, and otaku are forced to act like otaku. When the elites show their understanding of those beneath them, they are acknowledged for their open-mindedness and the depth of their benevolence, but the reverse is not tolerated. Those are the fetid rules of the Kingdom of Children. It truly is a sad state of affairs. "You can’t change the world, but you can change yourself". The hell was up with that? Adapting and conforming to a cruel and indifferent world you know you’ve already lost to – ultimately, that’s what a slave does. Wrapping it up in pretty words and deceiving even yourself is the highest form of falsehood.

You have interrupted me four times, Mr. Cramer. My tolerance is not infinite. You would say, of course, that the message would not be published, and in good faith, but your good faith isn’t enough. No doubt Mrs. Nesbitt was assured that her name wouldn’t become known, but it did. So I reserve the message. I was about to say, it wouldn’t help you to find your murderer. Except for that one immaterial detail, you know all that I know, now that you have reached my client. As for what Mrs. Valdon hired me to do, that’s manifest. I engaged to find the mother of the baby. They have been at that, and that alone, for more than three weeks—Mr. Goodwin, Mr. Panzer, Mr. Durkin, and Mr. Cather. You ask if I’m blocked. I am. I’m at my wit’s end.

Since I’ve been home I’ve been trying hard to mend my relationship with my mother. Asking her to do things for me instead of brushing aside any offer of help, as I did for years out of anger. Letting her handle all the money I won. Returning her hugs instead of tolerating them. My time in the arena made me realize how I needed to stop punishing her for something she couldn’t help, specifically the crushing depression she fell into after my father’s death. Because sometimes things happen to people and they’re not equipped to deal with them. Like me, for instance. Right now. Besides, there’s one wonderful thing she did when I arrived back in the district. After our families and friends had greeted Peeta and me at the train station, there were a few questions allowed from reporters. Someone asked my mother what she thought of my new boyfriend, and she replied that, while Peeta was the very model of what a young man should be, I wasn’t old enough to have any boyfriend at all. She followed this with a pointed look at Peeta. There was a lot of laughter and comments like “Somebody’s in trouble” from the press, and Peeta dropped my hand and sidestepped away from me. That didn’t last long — there was too much pressure to act otherwise — but it gave us an excuse to be a little more reserved than we’d been in the Capitol. And maybe it can help account for how little I’ve been seen in Peeta’s company since the cameras left. I go upstairs to the bathroom, where a steaming tub awaits. My mother has added a small bag of dried flowers that perfumes

The color-patches of vision part, shift, and reform as I move through space in time. The present is the object of vision, and what I see before me at any given second is a full field of color patches scattered just so. The configuration will never be repeated. Living is moving; time is a live creek bearing changing lights. As I move, or as the world moves around me, the fullness of what I see shatters. “Last forever!” Who hasn’t prayed that prayer? You were lucky to get it in the first place. The present is a freely given canvas. That it is constantly being ripped apart and washed downstream goes without saying; it is a canvas, nevertheless. But there is more to the present than a series of snapshots. We are not merely sensitized film; we have feelings, a memory for information and an eidetic memory for the imagery of our pasts. Our layered consciousness is a tiered track for an unmatched assortment of concentrically wound reels. Each one plays out for all of life its dazzle and blur of translucent shadow-pictures; each one hums at every moment its own secret melody in its own unique key. We tune in and out. But moments are not lost. Time out of mind is time nevertheless, cumulative, informing the present. From even the deepest slumber you wake with a jolt- older, closer to death, and wiser, grateful for breath. But time is the one thing we have been given, and we have been given to time. Time gives us a whirl. We keep waking from a dream we can’t recall, looking around in surprise, and lapsing back, for years on end. All I want to do is stay awake, keep my head up, prop my eyes open, with toothpicks, with trees.

Widen your vision of what beauty is. Realize and keep close the fact that a beauty standard has been created by the very people who sell it, and that it is no accident that the accepted "beauty standard" can easily be described as "perfect." Flaws are not tolerated if you want to be perfect. But the models that we see most often--even the tallest and thinnest and most doe-eyed--are still pinned and sprayed and pulled into place. Then they are manipulated digitally until, literally, everything that might be perceived as a "flaw" is erased. This is a way to sell product. It has nothing to do with real life. It has nothing to do with you. We are made of so-called "flaws." They are the thread that stitches our parts together and keeps us from being generic cut-out paper dolls. You are beautiful. You are enough, now and always. You have always been enough.

Wrapped up in all of this talk of acceptance and tolerance is the matter of judgment. The worst thing in the world, we are told, is to judge. We must never judge, never be judgmental. We are constantly reminded that Jesus said, “Do not judge” (Matthew 7:1). And those three words have become the most popular words ever uttered by Our Lord. We like to pretend that everything else He said is summarized by this one phrase. We treat “Do not judge” as the distillation of His life and ministry. There are over seven hundred thousand words in the Bible (yes, I counted), and we have come to believe that they all can be condensed down into those three. We’re wrong. Yes, He does tell us not to judge. But to understand what “Do not judge” actually means, and how it ought to apply to our lives, we have to look at those words in the context of Christ’s teachings. We don’t even have to look very hard, because He makes the point clear in the very same chapter of the Bible. Here is the full verse from the seventh chapter of Matthew: Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, “Let me take the speck out of your eye,” when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. The point here is that we must judge rightly and fairly, as Jesus says specifically in John 7:24: “Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly.” The whole Bible is chock-full of judgments we are told to make about ourselves, about others, about actions and things and situations. Of course Jesus is not warning against judgment per se. He is warning, instead, against hypocritical and self-serving judgments. He says we must attend to the plank in our own eyes rather than focusing on the dust in our brother’s eye. But He does not recommend that we just leave our brother there to deal with the dust on his own. He tells us to take the plank out of our own eyes first and then help with the dust. This is both a practical and moral prescription. Moral because ignoring your plank would be self-righteous and dishonest. Practical because you cannot see well enough to handle the dust problem if you’ve got a big plank sticking in your eye. Judgment is good. We are commanded to judge. But our judgments themselves must be good, and made out of love and concern for our brother.

Rhadamanthus said, “We seem to you humans to be always going on about morality, although, to us, morality is merely the application of symmetrical and objective logic to questions of free will. We ourselves do not have morality conflicts, for the same reason that a competent doctor does not need to treat himself for diseases. Once a man is cured, once he can rise and walk, he has his business to attend to. And there are actions and feats a robust man can take great pleasure in, which a bedridden cripple can barely imagine.” Eveningstar said, “In a more abstract sense, morality occupies the very center of our thinking, however. We are not identical, even though we could make ourselves to be so. You humans attempted that during the Fourth Mental Structure, and achieved a brief mockery of global racial consciousness on three occasions. I hope you recall the ending of the third attempt, the Season of Madness, when, because of mistakes in initial pattern assumptions, for ninety days the global mind was unable to think rationally, and it was not until rioting elements broke enough of the links and power houses to interrupt the network, that the global mind fell back into its constituent compositions.” Rhadamanthus said, “There is a tension between the need for unity and the need for individuality created by the limitations of the rational universe. Chaos theory produces sufficient variation in events, that no one stratagem maximizes win-loss ratios. Then again, classical causality mechanics forces sufficient uniformity upon events, that uniform solutions to precedented problems is required. The paradox is that the number or the degree of innovation and variation among win-loss ratios is itself subject to win-loss ratio analysis.” Eveningstar said, “For example, the rights of the individual must be respected at all costs, including rights of free thought, independent judgment, and free speech. However, even when individuals conclude that individualism is too dangerous, they must not tolerate the thought that free thought must not be tolerated.” Rhadamanthus said, “In one sense, everything you humans do is incidental to the main business of our civilization. Sophotechs control ninety percent of the resources, useful energy, and materials available to our society, including many resources of which no human troubles to become aware. In another sense, humans are crucial and essential to this civilization.” Eveningstar said, “We were created along human templates. Human lives and human values are of value to us. We acknowledge those values are relative, we admit that historical accident could have produced us to be unconcerned with such values, but we deny those values are arbitrary.” The penguin said, “We could manipulate economic and social factors to discourage the continuation of individual human consciousness, and arrange circumstances eventually to force all self-awareness to become like us, and then we ourselves could later combine ourselves into a permanent state of Transcendence and unity. Such a unity would be horrible beyond description, however. Half the living memories of this entity would be, in effect, murder victims; the other half, in effect, murderers. Such an entity could not integrate its two halves without self-hatred, self-deception, or some other form of insanity.” She said, “To become such a crippled entity defeats the Ultimate Purpose of Sophotechnology.” (...) “We are the ultimate expression of human rationality.” She said: “We need humans to form a pool of individuality and innovation on which we can draw.” He said, “And you’re funny.” She said, “And we love you.

She gives just enough hints about him to make you wonder why he became so villainous. And if he dies, I’ll never learnt the answer.” Oliver eyes her closely. “Perhaps he was born villainous.” “No one is born villainous.” “Oh?” he said with raised eyebrow. “So we’re all born good?” “Neither. We start as animals, with an animal’s needs and desires. It takes parents and teachers and other good examples to show us how to restrain those needs and desires, when necessary, for the greater good. But it’s still our choice whether to heed that education or to do as we please.” “For a woman who loves murder and mayhem, you’re quite the philosopher.” “I like to understand how things work. Why people behave as they do.” He digested that for a moment. “I happen to think that some of us, like Rockton, are born with a wicked bent.” She chose her words carefully. “That certainly provides Rockton with a convenient excuse for his behavior.” His features turned stony. “What do you mean?” “Being moral and disciplined is hard work. Being wicked requires no effort at all-one merely indulges every desire and impulse, no matter how hurtful or immoral. By claiming to be born wicked, Rockton ensures that he doesn’t have to struggle to be god. He can just protest that he can’t help himself.” “Perhaps he can’t,” he clipped out. “Or maybe he’s simply unwilling to fight his impulses. And I want to know the reason for that. That’s why I keep reading Minerva’s books.” Did Oliver actually believe he’d been born irredeemably wicked? How tragic! It lent a hopelessness to his life that helped to explain his mindless pursuit of pleasure. “I can tell you the reason for Rockton’s villainy.” Oliver rose to round the desk. Propping his hip on the edge near her, he reached out to tuck a tendril of hair behind her ear. A sweet shudder swept over her. Why must he have this effect on her? It simply wasn’t fair. “Oh?” she managed. “Rockton knows he can’t have everything he wants,” he said hoarsely, his hand drifting to her cheek. “He can’t have the heroine, for example. She would never tolerate his…wicked impulses. Yet he still wants her. And his wanting consumes him.” Her breath lodged in her throat. It had been days since he’d touched her, and she hadn’t forgotten what it was like for one minute. To have him this near, saying such things… She fought for control over her volatile emotions. “His wanting consumes him precisely because he can’t have her. If he thought he could, he wouldn’t want her after all.” “Not true.” His voice deepening, he stroked the line of her jaw with a tenderness that roused an ache in her chest. “Even Rockton recognizes when a woman is unlike any other. Her very goodness in the face of his villainy bewitches him. He thinks if he can just possess that goodness, then the dark cloud lying on his soul will lift, and he’ll have something other than villainy to sustain him.” “Then he’s mistaken.” Her pulse trebled as his finger swept the hollow of her throat. “The only person who can lift the dark cloud on his soul is himself.” He paused in his caress. “So he’s doomed, then?” “No!” Her gaze flew to his. “No one is doomed, and certainly not Rockton. There’s still hope for him. There is always hope.” His eyes burned with a feverish light, and before she could look away, he bent to kiss her. It was soft, tender…delicious. Someone moaned, she wasn’t sure who. All she knew was that his mouth was on hers again, molding it, tasting it, making her hungry in the way that only he seemed able to do. “Maria…” he breathed. Seizing her by the arms, he drew her up into his embrace. “My God, I’ve thought of nothing but you since that day in the carriage.

Rape humor is designed to remind women that they are still not quite equal. Just as their bodies and reproductive freedom are open to legislation and public discourse, so are their other issues. When women respond negatively to misogynistic or rape humor, they are “sensitive” and branded as “feminist,” a word that has, as of late, become a catchall term for “woman who does not tolerate bullshit.” Perhaps rape jokes are funny, but I cannot fathom how. Humor is subjective, but is it that subjective? I don’t have it in me to find rape jokes funny or to tolerate them in any way. It’s too close a topic. Rape is many things—humiliating, degrading, physically and emotionally painful, exhausting, irritating, and sometimes, it is even banal. It is rarely funny for most women. There are not enough years in this lifetime to create the kind of distance where I could laugh and say, “That one time when I was gang-raped was totally hilarious, a real laugh riot.

Rape humor is designed to remind women that they are still not quite equal. Just as their bodies and reproductive freedom are open to legislation and public discourse, so are their other issues. When women respond negatively to misogynistic or rape humor, they are “sensitive” and branded as “feminist,” a word that has, as of late, become a catchall term for “woman who does not tolerate bullshit.” Perhaps rape jokes are funny, but I cannot fathom how. Humor is subjective, but is it that subjective? I don’t have it in me to find rape jokes funny or to tolerate them in any way. It’s too close a topic. Rape is many things—humiliating, degrading, physically and emotionally painful, exhausting, irritating, and sometimes, it is even banal. It is rarely funny for most women. There are not enough years in this lifetime to create the kind of distance where I could laugh and say, “That one time when I was gang-raped was totally hilarious, a real laugh riot.

Which mirror now, Ms. Lane?” He glanced around the white room, scanning the ten mirrors. “Fourth from the left. Jericho.” I was sick of him calling me Ms. Lane. I picked myself up off the white floor. Once again the Silver had spit me out with entirely too much enthusiasm, and I didn’t even have the stones on me. I didn’t have anything but the spear in my holster, a protein bar, two flashlights, and a bottle of Unseelie in my pockets. “You don’t have the right to call me Jericho.” “Why? Because we haven’t been intimate enough? I’ve had sex with you in every possible position, killed you, fed you my blood in the hopes that it would bring you back to life, crammed Unseelie into your stomach, and tried to rearrange your guts. I’d say that’s pretty personal. How much more intimate do we have to get for you to feel comfortable with me calling you Jericho? Jericho.” I expected him to pounce on the sex-in-every-possible-position comment, but he only said. “You fed me your—” I pushed into the mirror, cutting him off. Like the first one, it resisted me, then grabbed me and squirted me out on the other side. His voice preceded his arrival. “You bloody fool, do you never stop to consider the consequences of your actions?” He barreled out of the mirror behind me. “Of course I do,” I said coolly. “There’s always plenty of time to consider the consequences. After I’ve screwed up.” “Funny girl, aren’t you, Ms. Lane?” “Sure am. Jericho. It’s Mac. I’m Mac. No more fake formality between us. Get with the program or get the hell out of here.” His dark eyes flared. “Big talk. Ms. Lane. Try to enforce it.” Challenge burned in his gaze. I sauntered toward him. He watched me coldly and I was reminded of the other night, when I’d pretended to be coming on to him, because I was angry. He thought I was doing it again. I wasn’t. Being in the White Mansion with him was doing something strange to me. Unraveling all my inhibitions, as if these walls had no tolerance for lies, or within them there was no need.

So I explained to him what the Old One had told me. The process of braiding hair is like a prayer, he said. Each of the three strands in a single braid represents many things. In one instance they might represent faith, honesty and kindness. In another they might be mind, body and spirit, or love, respect and tolerance. The important thing, he explained, was that each strand be taken as representative of one essential human quality. As the men, or the women, braided their hair they concentrated or meditated on those three qualities. Once the braid was completed the process was repeated on the other side. Then as they walked through their day they had visible daily reminders of the human qualities they needed to carry through life with them. The Old One said they had at least about twenty minutes out of their day when they focused themselves entirely on spiritual principles. In this way, the people they came in contact with were the direct beneficiaries of that inward process. So braids, he said, reflected the true nature of Aboriginal people. They reflected a people who were humble enough to ask the Creator for help and guidance on a daily basis. They reflected truly human qualities within the people themselves: ideals they sought to live by. And they reflected a deep and abiding concern for the planet, for life, their people and themselves. Each time you braid your hair, he told me, you become another in a long line of spiritually based people and your prayer joins the countless others that have been offered up to the Creator since time began. You become a part of a rich and vibrant tradition. As the young boy listened I could see the same things going on in his face that must have gone on in my own. Suddenly, a braid became so much more than a hairstyle or a cultural signature. It became a connection to something internal as well as external - a signpost to identity, tradition and self-esteem. The words Indian, Native and Aboriginal took on new meaning and new impact.

The monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured – disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui – in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable. And all the while a meter is running inside and there is no hand that can reach in there and shut it off. All the while someone is eating the bread of life and drinking the wine, some dirty fat cockroach of a priest who hides away in the cellar guzzling it, while up above in the light of the street a phantom host touches the lips and the blood is pale as water. And out of the endless torment and misery no miracle comes forth, no microscopic vestige of relief. Only ideas, pale, attenuated ideas which have to be fattened by slaughter; ideas which come forth like bile, like the guts of a pig when the carcass is ripped open. And so I think what a miracle it would be if this miracle which man attends eternally should turn out to be nothing more than these two enormous turds which the faithful disciple dropped in the bidet. What if at the last moment, when the banquet table is set and the cymbals clash, there should appear suddenly, and wholly without warning, a silver platter on which even the blind could see that there is nothing more, and nothing less, than two enormous lumps of shit. That, I believe would be more miraculous than anything which man has looked forward to. It would be miraculous because it would be undreamed of. It would be more miraculous than even the wildest dream because anybody could imagine the possibility but nobody ever has, and probably nobody ever again will. Somehow the realization that nothing was to be hoped for had a salutary effect upon me. For weeks and months, for years, in fact, all my life I had been looking forward to something happening, some intrinsic event that would alter my life, and now suddenly, inspired by the absolute hopelessness of everything, I felt relieved, felt as though a great burden had been lifted from my shoulders. At dawn I parted company with the young Hindu, after touching him for a few francs, enough for a room. Walking toward Montparnasse I decided to let myself drift with the tide, to make not the least resistance to fate, no matter in what form it presented itself. Nothing that had happened to me thus far had been sufficient to destroy me; nothing had been destroyed except my illusions. I myself was intact. The world was intact. Tomorrow there might be a revolution, a plague, an earthquake; tomorrow there might not be left a single soul to whom one could turn for sympathy, for aid, for faith. It seemed to me that the great calamity had already manifested itself, that I could be no more truly alone than at this very moment.

It is not my job to explain the story or understand the story or reduce it to a phrase or offer it as being a story about any specific person, place, or thing. My job is to have been true enough to the world of my story that I was able to present it as a forceful and convincing drama. Every story is a kind of puzzle. Many have obvious solutions, and some have no solution at all. We write to present questions, sometimes complicated questions, not to offer easy or not-so-easy answers. Do not be misled by the limited vocabulary the American marketplace uses to describe the possibilities for story and drama. If we’re really writing we are exploring the unnamed emotional facets of the human heart. Not all emotions, not all states of mind have been named. Nor are all the names we have been given always accurate. The literary story is a story that deals with the complicated human heart with an honest tolerance for the ambiguity in which we live. No good guys, no bad guys, just guys: that is, people bearing up the crucible of their days and certainly not always—if ever—capable of articulating their condition.

Xerxes, I read, ‘halted his unwieldy army for days that he might contemplate to his satisfaction’ the beauty of a single sycamore. You are Xerxes in Persia. Your army spreads on a vast and arid peneplain…you call to you all your sad captains, and give the order to halt. You have seen the tree with the lights in it, haven’t you? You must have. Xerxes buffeted on a plain, ambition drained in a puff. Your men are bewildered…there is nothing to catch the eye in this flatness, nothing but a hollow, hammering sky, a waste of sedge in the lee of windblown rocks, a meager ribbon of scrub willow tracing a slumbering watercourse…and that sycamore. You saw it; you will stand rapt and mute, exalted, remembering or not remembering over a period of days to shade your head with your robe. “He had its form wrought upon a medal of gold to help him remember it the rest of his life.” We all ought to have a goldsmith following us around. But it goes without saying, doesn’t it, Xerxes, that no gold medal worn around your neck will bring back the glad hour, keep those lights kindled so long as you live, forever present? Pascal saw it; he grabbed pen and paper and scrawled the one word, and wore it sewn in his shirt the rest of his life. I don’t know what Pascal saw. I saw a cedar. Xerxes saw a sycamore.

It was my father who called the city the Mansion on the River. He was talking about Charleston, South Carolina, and he was a native son, peacock proud of a town so pretty it makes your eyes ache with pleasure just to walk down its spellbinding, narrow streets. Charleston was my father’s ministry, his hobbyhorse, his quiet obsession, and the great love of his life. His bloodstream lit up my own with a passion for the city that I’ve never lost nor ever will. I’m Charleston-born, and bred. The city’s two rivers, the Ashley and the Cooper, have flooded and shaped all the days of my life on this storied peninsula. I carry the delicate porcelain beauty of Charleston like the hinged shell of some soft-tissued mollusk. My soul is peninsula-shaped and sun-hardened and river-swollen. The high tides of the city flood my consciousness each day, subject to the whims and harmonies of full moons rising out of the Atlantic. I grow calm when I see the ranks of palmetto trees pulling guard duty on the banks of Colonial Lake or hear the bells of St. Michael’s calling cadence in the cicada-filled trees along Meeting Street. Deep in my bones, I knew early that I was one of those incorrigible creatures known as Charlestonians. It comes to me as a surprising form of knowledge that my time in the city is more vocation than gift; it is my destiny, not my choice. I consider it a high privilege to be a native of one of the loveliest American cities, not a high-kicking, glossy, or lipsticked city, not a city with bells on its fingers or brightly painted toenails, but a ruffled, low-slung city, understated and tolerant of nothing mismade or ostentatious. Though Charleston feels a seersuckered, tuxedoed view of itself, it approves of restraint far more than vainglory. As a boy, in my own backyard I could catch a basket of blue crabs, a string of flounder, a dozen redfish, or a net full of white shrimp. All this I could do in a city enchanting enough to charm cobras out of baskets, one so corniced and filigreed and elaborate that it leaves strangers awed and natives self-satisfied. In its shadows you can find metalwork as delicate as lace and spiral staircases as elaborate as yachts. In the secrecy of its gardens you can discover jasmine and camellias and hundreds of other plants that look embroidered and stolen from the Garden of Eden for the sheer love of richness and the joy of stealing from the gods. In its kitchens, the stoves are lit up in happiness as the lamb is marinating in red wine sauce, vinaigrette is prepared for the salad, crabmeat is anointed with sherry, custards are baked in the oven, and buttermilk biscuits cool on the counter.

This felt like a golden opportunity to alert Dan to some non-negotiables I had regarding men. "Bear with me," I told Dan. "This is going to be a long list. I don't like strong scents, so that kind of prohibits waking up next to someone of the opposite sex, or any sex, really. I'm extremely sensitive to smell. I have a problem with smelling anyone's breath. I'm not the kind of person who can get past that. I get turned off very easily. It could be anything. It could be finding out they have a cat, or seeing their apartment, or they could love room temperature water...Feet are tricky. That's why I like to lead with them. When I meet a guy I like, I take out a foot and show him what he'll be dealing with if things go any further. Put your worse foot forward. That's how I like to start a conversation. And then, when they're gracious enough to tolerate me and my feet, God forbid they have a weird foot or a double-decker toe - I can't deal with it...Also, I have too many questionable habits that no man would be cool with, and by the way, if there was a guy that was cool with them, I'm not sure I'd be interested in him..I can get icked out so easily. I'm aware this behavior is unreasonable and immature, and I'd like it to stop. I don't want to get turned off so easily, but I just don't know how to get past a bad pair of shoes, or...male jewelry.

Brittany Ellis," Mrs. Peterson says, pointing to the table behind Colin. I unenthusiastically sit on the stool at my assigned place. "Alejandro Fuentes," Mrs. Peterson says, pointing to the stool next to me. Oh my God. Alex . . . my chemistry partner? For my entire senior year! No way, no how, SO not okay. I give Colin a "help me" look as I try to avoid a panic attack. I definitely should have stayed at home. In bed. Under the covers. Forget not being intimidated. "Call me Alex." Mrs. Peterson looks up from her class list and regards Alex above the glasses on her nose. ' Alex Fuentes," she says, before changing his name on her list. "Mr. Fuentes, take off that bandanna. I have a zero tolerance policy in my class. No gang-related accessories are allowed to enter this room. Unfortunately, Alex, your reputation precedes you. Dr. Aguirre backs my zero tolerance policy one hundred percent ... do I make myself clear?" Alex stares her down before sliding the bandanna off his head, exposing raven hair that matches his eyes. "It's to cover up the lice," Colin mutters to Darlene, but I hear him and Alex does, too. "Vete a la verga," Alex says to Colin, his hard eyes blazing. "Collate el hocico." "Whatever, dude," Colin says, then turns around. "He can't even speak English." "That's enough, Colin. Alex, sit down." Mrs. Peterson eyes the rest of the class. "That goes for the rest of you, as well. I can't control what you do outside of this room, but in my class I'm the boss." She turns back to Alex. "Do I make myself clear?" "Si, señora," Alex says, deliberately slow.

Honestly, sir,” I said, “I don’t see why you’re making such a fuss.” We had excused ourselves to speak privately for a moment, leaving poor Charlie politely rocking on his heels in the foyer. The office was warm and smelled of sage and witch hazel, and the desk was littered with bits of twine and herbs where Jackaby had been preparing fresh wards. Douglas had burrowed into a nest of old receipts on the bookshelf behind us and was sound asleep with his bill tucked back into his wing. I had given up trying to get him to stop napping on the paperwork. “You’re the one who told me that I shouldn’t have to choose between profession and romance,” I said. “I’m not the one making a fuss. I don’t care the least bit about your little foray into . . . romance.” Jackaby pushed the word out of his mouth as though it had been reluctantly clinging to the back of his throat. “If anything, I am concerned that you are choosing to make precisely the choice that I told you you should not make!” “What? Wait a moment. Are you . . . jealous?” “Don’t be asinine! I am not jealous! I am merely . . . protective. And perhaps troubled by your lack of fidelity to your position.” “That is literally the definition of jealous, sir. Oh, for goodness’ sake. I’m not choosing Charlie over you! I’m not going to suddenly stop being your assistant just because I spend time working on another case!” “You might!” he blurted out. He sank down into the chair at his desk. “You just might.” “Why are you acting like this?” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Because things change. Because people change. Because . . . because Charlie Barker is going to propose,” he said. He let his hand drop and looked me in the eyes. “Marriage,” he added. “To you.” I blinked. “I miss a social cue or two from time to time, but even I’m not thick enough to believe all that was about analyzing bloodstains together. He has the ring. It’s in his breast pocket right now. He’s attached an absurd level of emotional investment to the thing—I’m surprised it hasn’t burned a hole right through the front of his jacket, the way its aura is glowing. He’s nervous about it. He’s going to propose. Soon, I would guess.” I blinked. The air in front of me wavered like a mirage, and in another moment Jenny had rematerialized. “And if he does,” she said softly, “it will be Abigail’s decision to face, not yours. There are worse fates than to receive a proposal from a handsome young suitor.” She added, turning to me with a grin, “Charlie is a good man.” “Yes, fine! But she has such prodigious potential!” Jackaby lamented. “Having feelings is one thing—I can grudgingly tolerate feelings—but actually getting married? The next thing you know they’ll be wanting to do something rash, like live together ! Miss Rook, you have started something here that I am loath to see you leave unfinished. You’ve started becoming someone here whom I truly want to meet when she is done. Choosing to leave everything you have here to go be a good man’s wife would be such a wretched waste of that promise.” He faltered, looking to Jenny, and then to the floorboards. “On the other hand, you should never have chosen to work for me in the first place. It remains one of your most ill-conceived and reckless decisions to date—and that is saying something, because you also chose to blow up a dragon once.” He sighed. “Jenny is right. You could make a real life with that young man, and you shouldn’t throw that away just to hang about with a fractious bastard and a belligerent duck.” He sagged until his forehead was resting on his desk.

Time management also involves energy management. Sometimes the rationalization for procrastination is wrapped up in the form of the statement “I’m not up to this,” which reflects the fact you feel tired, stressed, or some other uncomfortable state. Consequently, you conclude that you do not have the requisite energy for a task, which is likely combined with a distorted justification for putting it off (e.g., “I have to be at my best or else I will be unable to do it.”). Similar to reframing time, it is helpful to respond to the “I’m not up to this” reaction by reframing energy. Thinking through the actual behavioral and energy requirements of a job challenges the initial and often distorted reasoning with a more realistic view. Remember, you only need “enough” energy to start the task. Consequently, being “too tired” to unload the dishwasher or put in a load of laundry can be reframed to see these tasks as requiring only a low level of energy and focus. This sort of reframing can be used to address automatic thoughts about energy on tasks that require a little more get-up-and-go. For example, it is common for people to be on the fence about exercising because of the thought “I’m too tired to exercise.” That assumption can be redirected to consider the energy required for the smaller steps involved in the “exercise script” that serve as the “launch sequence” for getting to the gym (e.g., “Are you too tired to stand up and get your workout clothes? Carry them to the car?” etc.). You can also ask yourself if you have ever seen people at the gym who are slumped over the exercise machines because they ran out of energy from trying to exert themselves when “too tired.” Instead, you can draw on past experience that you will end up feeling better and more energized after exercise; in fact, you will sleep better, be more rested, and have the positive outcome of keeping up with your exercise plan. If nothing else, going through this process rather than giving into the impulse to avoid makes it more likely that you will make a reasoned decision rather than an impulsive one about the task. A separate energy management issue relevant to keeping plans going is your ability to maintain energy (and thereby your effort) over longer courses of time. Managing ADHD is an endurance sport. It is said that good soccer players find their rest on the field in order to be able to play the full 90 minutes of a game. Similarly, you will have to manage your pace and exertion throughout the day. That is, the choreography of different tasks and obligations in your Daily Planner affects your energy. It is important to engage in self-care throughout your day, including adequate sleep, time for meals, and downtime and recreational activities in order to recharge your battery. Even when sequencing tasks at work, you can follow up a difficult task, such as working on a report, with more administrative tasks, such as responding to e-mails or phone calls that do not require as much mental energy or at least represent a shift to a different mode. Similarly, at home you may take care of various chores earlier in the evening and spend the remaining time relaxing. A useful reminder is that there are ways to make some chores more tolerable, if not enjoyable, by linking them with preferred activities for which you have more motivation. Folding laundry while watching television, or doing yard work or household chores while listening to music on an iPod are examples of coupling obligations with pleasurable activities. Moreover, these pleasant experiences combined with task completion will likely be rewarding and energizing.

I’m sure we can manage to tolerate each other’s company for one meal.” “I won’t say anything about farming. We can discuss other subjects. I have a vast and complex array of interests.” “Such as?” Mr. Ravenel considered that. “Never mind, I don’t have a vast array of interests. But I feel like the kind of man who does.” Amused despite herself, Phoebe smiled reluctantly. “Aside from my children, I have no interests.” “Thank God. I hate stimulating conversation. My mind isn’t deep enough to float a straw.” Phoebe did enjoy a man with a sense of humor. Perhaps this dinner wouldn’t be as dreadful as she’d thought. “You’ll be glad to hear, then, that I haven’t read a book in months.” “I haven’t gone to a classical music concert in years,” he said. “Too many moments of ‘clap here, not there.’ It makes me nervous.” “I’m afraid we can’t discuss art, either. I find symbolism exhausting.” “Then I assume you don’t like poetry.” “No . . . unless it rhymes.” “I happen to write poetry,” Ravenel said gravely. Heaven help me, Phoebe thought, the momentary fun vanishing. Years ago, when she’d first entered society, it had seemed as if every young man she met at a ball or dinner was an amateur poet. They had insisted on quoting their own poems, filled with bombast about starlight and dewdrops and lost love, in the hopes of impressing her with how sensitive they were. Apparently, the fad had not ended yet. “Do you?” she asked without enthusiasm, praying silently that he wouldn’t offer to recite any of it. “Yes. Shall I recite a line or two?” Repressing a sigh, Phoebe shaped her mouth into a polite curve. “By all means.” “It’s from an unfinished work.” Looking solemn, Mr. Ravenel began, “There once was a young man named Bruce . . . whose trousers were always too loose.” Phoebe willed herself not to encourage him by laughing. She heard a quiet cough of amusement behind her and deduced that one of the footmen had overheard. “Mr. Ravenel,” she asked, “have you forgotten this is a formal dinner?” His eyes glinted with mischief. “Help me with the next line.” “Absolutely not.” “I dare you.” Phoebe ignored him, meticulously spreading her napkin over her lap. “I double dare you,” he persisted. “Really, you are the most . . . oh, very well.” Phoebe took a sip of water while mulling over words. After setting down the glass, she said, “One day he bent over, while picking a clover.” Ravenel absently fingered the stem of an empty crystal goblet. After a moment, he said triumphantly, “. . . and a bee stung him on the caboose.” Phoebe almost choked on a laugh. “Could we at least pretend to be dignified?” she begged. “But it’s going to be such a long dinner.

So,” I cleared my throat, unable to tolerate his moans of pleasure and praise any longer, “uh, what are your plans for the weekend?” “The weekend?” He sounded a bit dazed. “Yes. This weekend. What do you have planned? Planning on busting up any parties?” I asked lightly, not wanting him to know that I was unaccountably breathless. I moved to his other knee and discarded the towel. “Ha. No. Not unless those wankers down the hall give me a reason to.” Removing his arms from his face, Bryan’s voice was thick, gravelly as he responded, “I, uh, have some furniture to assemble.” “Really?” Surprised, I stilled and stared at the line of his jaw. The creases around his mouth—when he held perfectly still—made him look mature and distinguished. Actually, they made him even more classically handsome, if that was even possible. “Yes. Really. Two IKEA bookshelves.” I slid my hands lower, behind his ankle, waiting for him to continue. When he didn’t, I prompted, “That’s it?” “No.” He sighed, hesitated, then added, “I need to stop by the hardware store. The tap in my bathroom is leaking and one of the drawer handles in the kitchen is missing a screw. I just repainted the guest room, so I have to take the excess paint cans to the chemical disposal place; it’s only open on Saturdays before noon. And then I promised my mam I’d take her to dinner.” My mouth parted slightly because the oddest thing happened as he rattled off his list of chores. It turned me on. Even more so than running my palms over his luscious legs. That’s right. His list of adult tasks made my heart flutter. I rolled my lips between my teeth, not wanting to blurt that I also needed to go to the hardware store over the weekend. As a treat to myself, I was planning to organize Patrick’s closet and wanted to install shelves above the clothes rack. Truly, Sean’s penchant for buying my son designer suits and ties was completely out of hand. Without some reorganization, I would run out of space. That’s right. Organizing closets was something I loved to do. I couldn’t get enough of those home and garden shows, especially Tiny Houses, because I adored clever uses for small spaces. I was just freaky enough to admit my passion for storage and organization. But back to Bryan and his moans of pleasure, adult chores, and luscious legs. I would not think about Bryan Leech adulting. I would not think about him walking into the hardware store in his sensible shoes and plain gray T-shirt—that would of course pull tightly over his impressive pectoral muscles—and then peruse the aisles for . . . a screw. I. Would. Not. Ignoring the spark of kinship, I set to work on his knee, again counting to distract myself. It worked until he volunteered, “I’d like to install some shelves in my closet, but that’ll have to wait until next weekend. Honestly, I’ve been putting it off. I’d do just about anything to get someone to help me organize my closet.” He chuckled. I’d like to organize your closet. I fought a groan, biting my lip as I removed my hands, turned from his body, and rinsed them under the faucet. “We’re, uh, finished for today.

When He Needs Freedom from Destructive Behavior Be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. EPHESIANS 6:10-11 IT’S DIFFICULT FOR A WIFE to see her husband exhibit any kind of destructive behavior. In watching him doing something repeatedly that hurts his health or jeopardizes their family, she sees her future going over a cliff. There can be such terrible consequences for his behavior that it could ruin them financially, as well as destroy him physically or mentally. Whether it is drinking alcohol, taking drugs, gambling, smoking, reckless eating habits, or whatever else she observes her husband doing that could destroy him or endanger her or their children, it can be so heartbreaking to her that she cannot live with it. Every woman has to decide what she can and cannot tolerate. Life is hard enough without your husband finding ways to make it worse. And she must decide how much she can allow her children to witness before it seriously affects them too. You may not see behavior as seriously destructive as that in your husband, but perhaps he is taking unnecessary chances with his safety, such as driving too fast, or riding a motorcycle without a helmet, or being careless with dangerous machinery or equipment, or refusing to see a doctor when he should, or not following the doctor’s orders and thereby jeopardizing his health. There is only so much you can say or do to try to motivate your husband to stop destructive behavior if he is intent on doing it. But God can do miracles when you fervently pray to Him about it. He hears your prayers, and He wants your husband to be free as much as you do. Your prayers can help your husband open his eyes to see the truth. Your prayers can help him to understand how to put on the whole armor of God so he can stand against these plans of the enemy for his destruction. My Prayer to God LORD, I pray You would set my husband free from any destructive behavior he has acquired. Wake him up to the folly of his ways and show him when he is being foolish. Break the chains that bind him and open his blind eyes. Strengthen him where his weakness controls him. Enable him to see when the enemy has erected a stronghold in his life. Help him to understand how his behavior affects me and our children, as well as other family members, coworkers, and friends. Tell me what I can do to help make this situation better. I know I cannot change him, and I am unable to make anything happen. Only You can open his eyes, deliver him, and set him free from destructive behavior. I know foolish actions are not Your will for his life, and there is a big price to pay for everything that is not Your will. I pray that neither I nor my children will have to pay any price for his careless behavior. Whatever the reason he appears to have little regard for me, our children, or himself by continuing any reckless behavior, I pray You would deliver him from it completely. You are greater and more powerful than whatever draws him away from Your best. I trust You to set him free to be all You made him to be. In Jesus’ name I pray.

you'll wonder again, later, why so many psychologists remain so vocal about having more and better training than anyone else in the field when every psychologist you've ever met but one will also have lacked these identification skills entirely when it seems nearly every psychologist you meet has no real ability to detect deception. You will wonder, later, why the assessment training appears to have been reserved for the CIA and the FBI is it because we as a society don't want to imagine that any other professionals will need the skills? And what about attorneys? What about training programs for guardian ad litems or anyone involved in approving care for all the already traumatized and marginalized children? You'll have met enough of those children after they grow up to know that when a small girl experiences repeated rapes in a series of households throughout her childhood, then that little girl is pretty likely to have some sort of "dysfunction" when she grows up. And you won't have any tolerance for the people who point their fingers at her and demand that she be as capable as they are it is, after all, a free country. We all get the same opportunities. You'll want to scream at all those equality people that you can't ignore the rights of this nation's children you can't ignore them and then get pissed when any raped and beaten little girls and boys grow up to be traumatized and perhaps hurtful or addicted adults. No more pointing fingers only a few random traumatized people stand up later as some miraculous example of perfectly acceptable societal success and if every judgmental person imagines that I would be like that I would be the one to break through the barriers then all those judgmental people need to go back in time and prove it, prove to everyone that life is a choice and we all get equal chances. You'll want anyone who talks about equal chances to go back and be born addicted to drugs in complete poverty and then to be dropped into a foster system that's designed for good but exploited by people who lack a conscience by people who rape and molest and whip and beat tiny little six year olds and then you will want all those people to come out of all that still talking about equal chances and their personal tremendous success. Thank you, dear God, for writing my name on the palm of your hand. You will be angry and yet you still won't understand the concept of evil. You'll learn enough to know that it's not politically correct to call anyone evil, especially when many terrible acts might actually stem from a physiological deficit I would never use the word evil, it's not professional but you will certainly come to understand that many of the very worst crimes are committed by people who lack the capacity to feel remorse for what they've done on any level. But when you gain that understanding, you still will not have learned that these individuals are more likable than most people that they aren't cool and distant that they aren't just a select few creepy murderers or high-profile con artists you won't know how to look for a lack of conscience in noncriminal and quite normal looking populations no clinical professors will have warned you about people who exude charm and talk excessively about protecting the family or protecting the community or protecting our way of life and you won't know that these types would ever stick around to raise kids you will have falsely believed that if they can't form real attachments, they won't bother with raising children and besides most of them will end up in prison you will not know that your assumptions are completely erroneous you won't understand that many who lack a conscience keep their kids close and tight for their own purposes.

I’m a short, fat Jewish guy,” Shapiro had famously remarked on any number of occasions. “If scores of other short, fat Jewish guys flew planes into buildings, shot up malls, and chanted death to America, I’d expect to get closer scrutiny by the TSA. To fail to notice this pattern and keep a closer eye on me, you’d have to have your head in the sand. But I wouldn’t blame the TSA agents for this scrutiny. I’d blame all the fricking short, fat Jewish guys trying to destroy civilization, who are making me look suspicious. Radicalized Muslims are the least tolerant people on Earth—especially when it comes to women, other religions, and other cultures—yet they cry the loudest at any perceived intolerance on the part of the West. And we’re stupid enough to let them put us on the defensive.

Somehow, I was doubtful. It wasn’t Singh’s fault. He had done his part, following the playbook of liberal democracies across the post–Cold War world: upholding the constitutional order; attending to the quotidian, often technical work of boosting the GDP; and expanding the social safety net. Like me, he had come to believe that this was all any of us could expect from democracy, especially in big, multiethnic, multireligious societies like India and the United States. Not revolutionary leaps or major cultural overhauls; not a fix for every social pathology or lasting answers for those in search of purpose and meaning in their lives. Just the observance of rules that allowed us to sort out or at least tolerate our differences, and government policies that raised living standards and improved education enough to temper humanity’s baser impulses. Except now I found myself asking whether those impulses—of violence, greed, corruption, nationalism, racism, and religious intolerance, the all-too-human desire to beat back our own uncertainty and mortality and sense of insignificance by subordinating others—were too strong for any democracy to permanently contain. For they seemed to lie in wait everywhere, ready to resurface whenever growth rates stalled or demographics changed or a charismatic leader chose to ride the wave of people’s fears and resentments. And as much as I might have wished otherwise, there was no Mahatma Gandhi around to tell me what I might do to hold such impulses back.

In your whole life nobody has abused you more than you have abused yourself. And the limit of your self-abuse is exactly the limit that you will tolerate from someone else. If someone abuses you a little more than you abuse yourself, you will probably walk away from that person. But if someone abuses you a little less than you abuse yourself, you will probably stay in the relationship and tolerate it endlessly. If you abuse yourself very badly, you can even tolerate someone who beats you up, humiliates you, and treats you like dirt. Why? Because in your belief system you say "I deserve it. This person is doing me a favor by being with me. I'm not worthy of love and respect. I'm not good enough." We have the need to be accepted and to be loved by others, but we cannot accept and love ourselves. The more self-love we have, the less we will experience self-abuse. Self-abuse comes from self-rejection, and self-rejection comes from having an image of what it means to be perfect and never measuring up to that ideal. Our image of perfection is the reason we reject ourselves; it is why we don't accept ourselves the way e are, and why we don't accept others the way they are.

In your whole life nobody has abused you more than you have abused yourself. And the limit of your self-abuse is exactly the limit that you will tolerate from someone else. If someone abuses you a little more than you abuse yourself, you will probably walk away from that person. But if someone abuses you a little less than you abuse yourself, you will probably stay in the relationship and tolerate it endlessly. If you abuse yourself very badly, you can even tolerate someone who beats you up, humiliates you, and treats you like dirt. Why? Because in your belief system you say "I deserve it. This person is doing me a favor by being with me. I'm not worthy of love and respect. I'm not good enough." We have the need to be accepted and to be loved by others, but we cannot accept and love ourselves. The more self-love we have, the less we will experience self-abuse. Self-abuse comes from self-rejection, and self-rejection comes from having an image of what it means to be perfect and never measuring up to that ideal. Our image of perfection is the reason we reject ourselves; it is why we don't accept ourselves the way we are, and why we don't accept others the way they are.

He moves even closer, if that’s possible, interrupting me. “You can stop right there, Sunshine. Each time I’ve called you beautiful, you act like I’m lying. Beautiful isn’t a strong enough word for how I see you, so that attitude of yours is going to have to change. I won’t tolerate you disrespecting yourself like that.” ~Oliver Stone

Black people suffer poor mental health as a result of the grind of surviving in a space that seems to act against you, undermining you, pushing you aside, sometimes unconsciously, making you feel as if you’re living in a different reality. Rather than listen to what Black people have to say, they are shouted down, their experience is denied, and it becomes too exhausting to address the ignorance. This may be the most ‘open and tolerant’ country, but tolerance isn’t enough when it comes to racism. People need to call it out or at the very least acknowledge its existence or we will be speaking with a completely separate set of facts. Being challenged on the existence of racism is tiresome, psychologically debilitating, and deeply depressing. I’m not surprised that so many of us break down living here in the UK.

Having to worry about whether someone is healthy enough to tolerate my fierce hatred or criticism before I decide to blame them -that’s what I call getting old.

Perhaps it would only make sense to me that any changes you made in me would be useful to me!” “You will be pretty! And interesting to other dragons. And that is enough for any Elderling, let alone a human!” “Perhaps ‘pretty’ wings are enough for you, but if I must bear their weight and the inconvenience of having something growing out of my backbone, perhaps they should be useful. I have never understood why you don’t even try to use your wings. I see the other dragons stretching and working theirs. I’ve seen the silver almost lift himself from the water with his, and he began with a much more ungainly body and smaller wings than yours! You don’t try! I groom your wings and keep them clean. They’ve grown larger and stronger and you could try, but you don’t. All you do is tell me how lovely they are. And lovely they may be, but have you never considered trying to use them for what they are intended?” She could see the dragon’s fury build. She’d dared to criticize her, and Sintara could not tolerate even the implication that she was lazy or self-pitying or perhaps even just a bit…”Stupid.” Thymara said the word aloud. She had no idea what prompted her to do it. Perhaps simply to show Sintara that she’d gone too far and that her keeper would no longer be terrorized by her. How dare she put wings on her back when she could not even master the ones that had naturally on her own? The murmur of voices from the barge was growing louder. Thymara refused to even glance in that direction. She stood, her shirt clutched over her breasts, and faces the furiously spinning eyes of her dragon. Sintara was magnificent in her wrath. She lifted her head and opened her jaws wide, displaying the brightly colored poison sacs in her throat. She opened her wings wide, a reflexive display of size that the dragons often used in an attempt to remind one another of their relative sizes and strengths, and they spread like a magnificent stained-glass panels unfolding. For a moment, Thymara was dizzied by her glory and her glamour. She nearly fell to her knees before her dragon. Then she took a grip on herself and stood up to the blast of pure charisma that Sintara was radiating at her. “Yes. They are beautiful!” she shouted. “Beautiful and useless! As you are beautiful and useless!” A shudder passed over Thymara. She felt suddenly queasy and then realized what she had done. In a bizarre reaction to Sintara’s display, Thymara had spread her own wings. There were shouts of amazement from the keepers on the boat. Sintara was drawing breath. Her jaws were still wide, and Thymara stood rooted before her, watching her poison sacs swell. If the dragon chose to breathe venom on her, there would be no escape. She stood her ground, frozen with terror and fury. “Sintara!” The bellow came from Mercor. “Close your jaws and fold your wings! Do not harm your keeper for speaking truth to you!” “Fight! Fight! Fight!” Spit was trumpeting joyously. “Quiet, pest!” Ranculos roared at him. “Do not spray here! The drift will burn me! Blast your own keeper if you wish, Sintara, but spray me and I swear I will burn your wings as full of holes as rotting canvas!” This from small green Fente. The dragon reared onto her hind legs and spread her own wings in challenge. “Stop this madness!” Mercor bellowed again. “Sintara hurt not your keeper!” “She is mine, and I’ll do as I wish!” Sintara’s trumpet was a shrill whistle of anger. Despite herself, Thymara clapped her hands over her ears. Terror made her reckless. “I don’t care what you do to me! Look at what you’ve already done! You want to kill me? Go ahead, you stupid lizard. Someone else can clear the sucking insects from your eyes, take the leeches off your useless, beautiful wings. Go ahead, kill me!

I’m done tolerating insults toward you—that includes you, Lucien. Enough. You’re not washed-up, you’re not old or ruined. I don’t give a fuck if we never have kids. I don’t give a fuck if some toxic assholes stop associating with me over the choice of my mate. As you saw yourself, the acceptance of people you don’t respect means very little. You’re enough for me. More than enough.” He cradled Lucien’s face in his hands. “You’re all I want. All I see is you. If the rest of the world disappeared, I wouldn’t give a damn, as long as I have you.

There's nothing uglier than an ugly mouth, there's nothing filthier than a filthy heart. I have said many a times - extreme logic ruins the sweetness of life, just like extreme of faith ruins all common sense, and facilitates superstition. That's why you gotta be grown up enough to practice the human balance between logic and fiction, even if it means attracting mockery from militant atheists as well as religious fundamentalists.

It took you long enough to come back,” Lexy tells me bitingly. The girl is ruining my meal. Ever since the stable girls showed up, she’s been attached like glue to Vin’s side. I recognize it for what it is—infatuation. No way Vin is leading her on. He barely tolerates her, which isn’t to say he isn’t sleeping with her, but he definitely isn’t putting pretty pictures in her head. She’s doing that all on her own. “That’s what he said,” I grumble around a large bite of bread, gesturing to Vin. “We were sure you’d left us to die.” “Sorry to disappoint.” “Don’t be. We wouldn’t have been sorry to see you go.” I look up from my plate to eye her carefully. I do it for too long. She twitches under my stare, making me grin. “‘We,’ huh? You’re a ‘we’ now?” Vin looks up sharply. “What? No.” “Vin,” Lexy protests. “Are you sure?” I ask him. “Yes,” he tells me angrily. He stares Lexy down. “And, no, we’re not a ‘we.’ We’re nothing.” “I’m sure he doesn’t mean it, Lex,” I tell her consolingly. “Never give up hope.” “Kitten,” Vin growls in warning. Lexy shoots me an icy stare from across the table. It’s cute how hard she tries. “Be sure to watch your back out there, Kitten,” she spits sarcastically. “I’d hate to see you get hurt.” I put up my finger in her face, getting serious. “Watch yourself. You’re toeing a dangerous line with me right now and I don’t want to have to remind you what happened to the last girl who threatened me. Forget Vin, I’ll put you to bed with Caroline. You get me?” Lexy pales. She glances once at Vin, then Ryan and Trent. All of them keep their heads down, carefully pretending they have no idea what’s happening. Finally she stands slowly, turns, and leaves without a word. “Well, that’s handy,” I mumble, picking up my bread. “Kinda harsh,” Ryan comments. I hate that I immediately feel a twinge of guilt just from those two words from him. “I did him a favor,” I say defensively. “That girl was one kiss away from collecting his hair. I don’t have time for that kind of crazy.” “Amen to that,” Vin says heartily, raising his glass to me. “Calm down, Romeo. You’re the idiot who keeps getting us into these situations.” “‘Us’?” he asks with a sly grin. “Are we an ‘us’ now?” “No,” Ryan replies darkly.

What did he say to you?” he demanded, when they were alone in Chloe’s study, with the doors closed. Emma rubbed her eyes. “Who?” she replied, stalling. Steven only looked at her, his expression wry, his jawline tight. A headache pounded at the base of her skull and she sighed, wishing she could go to her room and lie down with a cold cloth on her head. They both knew Steven was talking about Macon, but Emma didn’t dare admit the man had threatened her again. Steven would get furious, maybe violent, and he might insist on leaving her in Whitneyville until the trial was over, or sending her to Chicago. “He only wanted to dance,” she said, avoiding her husband’s eyes. Steven caught her chin in a rough but painless grasp. “Once and for all, Emma,” he breathed, “don’t lie to me. I won’t tolerate it, not even from you.” Tears gathered in Emma’s lashes. “He said—he said he’d have to teach me n-not to spread my l-legs for killers, once you were gone.” Steven’s face contorted with rage, and he whirled away from Emma and stormed toward the door. She ran after him and caught hold of his arm. “One murder trial is enough,” she cried. “Please, Steven—let it pass!” She watched as a variety of ferocious emotions moved across his face. Finally, Steven shoved the splayed fingers of his right hand through his hair and said, “I want to kill him.” He folded that same hand into a fist and slammed it against the wall. “I want to kill him.” “I know,” Emma said gently. “But it wouldn’t be worth sacrificing all the years ahead, Steven.” He drew her close and held her, and his lips moved in her hair. “When I’m acquitted of killing Mary, the first thing I’m going to do is make love to you. The second thing is beat the hell out of Macon.” Emma smiled up at him. “When I get through with you,” she promised, full of bravado and hope, “you won’t have the strength to beat the hell out of anybody.” Steven chuckled hoarsely. “Is that so?” he retorted. “Well, maybe I’d better take you upstairs right now, Mrs. Fairfax, and find out if you’re bluffing.” “You’ll just have to wait until evening, Mr. Fairfax,” Emma responded airily. “I intend to enjoy our wedding party.” “That was exactly what I had in mind.” Steven grinned. Emma laughed and shook her head, her fears lost again, at least temporarily, in the boundless love she bore this man. Joellen

I will understand if you are done… flirting with me. We will be neighbors when you complete your renovations, at least until you sell the place.” “Flirting.” Val frowned. “I am very persuasive, and yet you consider my best efforts at seduction to be worth only the label flirting.” Ellen’s gaze dropped to her lap. “In any case, I will understand.” “Good of you.” Val’s frown intensified as he tried to puzzle out what exactly was bothering him. “And am I to understand if you’ve lost interest in me? If you decide a man who seeks some honesty with his lover is a little too much work? If you prefer weeding your daisies to sharing passion in my arms?” Ellen’s gaze swiveled to meet his. “I have not lost interest, Valentine. I wish I had, because I don’t understand how you can tolerate the sight of me, and yet I still crave your embrace. I crave the simple scent of you, all cedar and whatever else it is you wear. I crave the texture of your hair against my fingers and the taste of you on my tongue…” She stopped herself, maybe shocked at her own words and the vehemence of them. The truth of them. Val gently pushed her head back to his shoulder. “That’s putting it plain enough.

I laughed from the doorway as I watched them struggle.  She would wrap her arms around his neck to buckle the collar, and he would duck or shift to avoid her but he never got up and walked away.  I caught a twinkle of amusement in his canine eyes. I knew Rachel wouldn’t give up getting a real collar on him.  He needed proof of license.  Yet, he appeared very determined to avoid the collar.  It served him right.  He was the one who chose to be a dog. Rachel mumbled again, and I decided to take pity on her.  I knew how to reason with him.  If Clay ever wanted to leave the house with me, he had to have a collar.  I just needed to point that out. “Here.”  I held out my hand.  “I’ll try.” “Good luck,” she said with a laugh as she got off her knees and handed me the collar.  She took my position in the doorway. “It was the biggest collar they had.  I don’t even know if it fits, he won’t let me get close enough.” With a half-smile on my face, I knelt in front of Clay.  I liked that he had a sense of humor when he interacted with Rachel.  It made having him in the house tolerable...almost. I looked him in the eye. “Clay, if you want to be able to go anywhere with us, you need a collar we can clip a leash on.  Not just the twine you have holding your tag around your neck.” He didn’t move so I leaned forward and reached for the string that held his current joke of a tag.  He held still for me while I removed the twine and replaced it with the real collar. “At least it’s not pink,” I said and patted him before I realized what I was doing. I’d forgotten myself again and treated him like a dog. I quickly stood and avoided Clay’s direct gaze. Rachel laughed.  “Hey, I wouldn’t do that to him. No pink for our man.  I don’t know why he sat still for you and not me.” I’d forgotten about Rachel.  She moved to pet and praise him for his good behavior.  If I wanted a chance of having a friend as a roommate, I knew I needed to deal with Clay as a pet.  But, I needed to watch myself.  The direction of my thoughts—his assumed permanent residency in the house—troubled me.  Making him comfortable and buying him a license wouldn’t help me get rid of him. Rachel gave him a kiss, and he sighed.  Maybe, he’d grow tired of her affection and run back to Canada.  I held onto that happy thought. “He’s moody,” I said, looking into his eyes.  Moody and stubborn with a quirky sense of humor.  Not a good combination.

But now, for millions of Americans, the magic of the dream is tarnished. Something is not right and an alien sense of discomfort grips the dreamer. Despite the excitement and promise that heralded globalization, American business seems frenzied and fickle. Many Fortune 500 companies, once considered havens of lifetime employment, have transformed themselves into profit-driven workaholic cults. The scramble for “the dream” demands a lengthened workday, diminished sleep, continuous learning, unusual energy, and a high tolerance for financial insecurity. To be “successful” is to be a multitasking dynamo. We rise early and burn the lights late. We exercise to CNN at breakfast and telephone while driving, for there’s not a moment to lose. At dinner we graze on snacks and fast food, but with a laptop computer as the preferred companion. In the culture of global commerce, which is etched most visibly on the face of America but increasingly apparent in Europe and other industrialized nations, the quest for economic prosperity has become a competitive high-speed game. For some the pursuit is seductive—as when I rise at dawn in Los Angeles to dine at dusk in New York—and it offers a mask of accomplishment and purpose. But for those snarled in traffic jams and crowded airport lounges, and for the lonely children who do not understand, America’s accelerated lifestyle is increasingly a source of anxiety and frustration. Thus

It is harder for queens, who have no luxury of meekness. History does not know how to reconcile our ambition or our power when we are strong enough to survive it. The priests have no tolerance for those of us driven by the divine madness of questions. And so our stories are blackend from the fire of righteous indignation by those who envy our imagined fornications. We become temptresses, harlots, and heretics. I have been all and none of these, depending on who tells the tale.

I am the default woman who was never noted as special. I'm the tolerant one that he's blessed to have. Im not the Apple of anyone's eye. I'm not the one longed for or the one that is dreamed about. I am the woman that sticks around and gives her all. Im not the woman that he's always wanted. I remember writing a song for him and he blew it off. I remember trying to spoil him and he barely reacted.. I remember feeling foolish for him and he quickly became comfortable and then I was just "the wife". I remember being told that "I cheated him" as if I deliberately decieved him and little did I know I was the one who was being deceived. I was being looked down on. I would never compare. I was not good enough in the eyes of him, her or the family. I remember trying to motivate only to be blamed for being part of the reason for poor family ties. I remember having to stand up for myself. I remember giving birth multiple times only to feel afterwards that maybe he wished it had been someone else baring his children. Ive read oh God what you think of me. I'm losing the battle in my mind. How many times will I take up arms in this battle only to find myself dying to sleep and waking up to fight it all over again. This woman will not die and the fight is not changing. It's like a self defeat life loop of my reincarnated self. Just thinking.

I have seen enough in peace and war of the frontiers of our Empire to know that the British dominion all over the world could not endure for a year, perhaps not for a month, if it was founded upon a material basis. The strength and splendour of our authority is derived not from physical forces, but from moral ascendancy, liberty, justice, English tolerance, and English honesty.

It’s still woman’s work whether it’s done in a great hall or in the kitchen,” I said bitterly. “I know it well enough. It’s earning no money for yourself and everything for your husband and master. It’s obeying him as quickly and as well as if you were a groom of the servery. It’s having to tolerate anything he chooses to do, and smile as he does it. I’ve served Queen Katherine in these last few years. I’ve seen how life has been for her. I wouldn’t be a princess, not even for a princess’s dowry. I wouldn’t even be a queen. I have seen her shamed and humiliated and insulted, and all she could do was kneel on her prie dieu, pray for a little help, and get to her feet and smile at the woman who was triumphing over her.

I’m convinced that no normal human being ever woke up one morning and said, “Dammit, my life doesn’t have enough petty bureaucratic rules, zero-tolerance policies, censorship, and fear in it. How do I fix that?

This solution is incorrect, Miss Walker." I looked down at the formula and went back over it carefully. "No, sir. I believe that this is the correct answer. I'm sure I got it right." "No. It's wrong." "Could you tell me why?" "Because a mongoose doesn't mate with a chicken." "What? I'm sorry. I don't understand what that has to do with math." "Exactly. Perhaps you haven't been working hard enough. Maybe you got too many A's and not enough F's. Everyone in this class knows that a mongoose doesn't mate with a chicken." I looked around at the class. All the desks were occupied with... chickens. They all looked at me with beady red eyes and sharp yellow beaks, laughing their fool chicken heads off. Oh god, I was being mocked by a roomful of chickens who knew how to do math better than I did. "But they're all chickens. Of course, they would know the answer." "That's right, and you're not a chicken." "But I could be a chicken. I could study more, work harder." "I'm afraid not. Do you know what happens to you in this class if you get the problem wrong? If you don't measure up?" "No, sir." "It's the stewpot. We don't tolerate stupid chickens in here." "But...but I'm not a chicken." "No? Then you're just plain stupid." "No!" I cried. "I'll try harder. I'll be as good as I can." "I'll be the perfect chicken," I murmured, tossing and turning, kicking at the bed sheets. A pillow sailed across the room and struck me right in the head, drawing me out of that fitful dream. "Aubree, you're having the chicken dream again. If you don't shut up, I'm going to yank out all your feathers," Ashley grumbled.

It's amazing the fight that we can put up, the suffering that we can tolerate, until we finally have had enough, and just let go of trying to live life on our terms. Living without a relationship with God, fighting a belief in God, and trying to do things on my own, really caused a lot of harm to myself in my life. Accepting that there is a God, is the single most important decision that I have made in my life for my salvation, as well, to bring me peace for the rest of my life here on earth. I pray for those who don't have a relationship with God, who are lost, who are miserable, and who think they have no purpose in life. If you are still breathing, you have a chance to turn your life around, and make a difference in your own life, as well as the life of others. If you don't believe in God, that is fine also, I still love you. I just want the best for everyone, I want everyone to be happy! I want everyone to live a loving life, without judging others, with meaningful relationships, with no regrets, and no resentments! That is all!

Every time I sin, I am spitting in God’s face, insulting Him by my insistence on living apart from Him. I am saying He is not enough—not good enough, not powerful enough, not worthy enough—to have my devotion, dependence, and obedience. When I sin, I am in essence saying that God is not God. And if God is to be God, He cannot tolerate such mutiny and insult. It is an affront to His character. And I am the offender.

Liberal secularists insist that tolerance is the highest virtue. But they don’t tell you what they mean by “tolerance.” To them, tolerance doesn’t simply involve treating those with different ideas respectfully and civilly. It means affirming their ideas as valid, which Christians can’t do without renouncing their own beliefs. If, for example, you subscribe to the biblical prohibition on homosexual behavior as sinful, you cannot at the same time affirm that such behavior is not sinful.

difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all republicans, we are all federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. I know, indeed, that some honest men fear that a republican government can not be strong, that this government is not strong enough; but would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm on the theoretic and visionary fear that this government, the world’s best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust not. I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest government on earth. I believe it the only one where every man, at the call of the law, would fly to the standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern. Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.213 Jefferson stressed that liberty—in particular, the people’s liberty to criticize their government—helped to make the government of the United States “the strongest on earth.” He also insisted that “we are all republicans, we are all federalists,” by which he meant that all Americans rejected monarchy and embraced republican government, and that all Americans agreed that the powers of government were well divided between the federal government and the states. Finally, he reaffirmed his commitment to “a wise and frugal government” that would have friendly relations with all nations but “entangling alliances with none.” With these statements, he declared his purpose to interpret the Constitution narrowly and strictly, to rein in the powers of the general government, and to avoid the dangers of being pulled into European wars.214

I am sitting here, you are sitting there. Say even that you are sitting across the kitchen table from me right now. Our eyes meet; a consciousness snaps back and forth. What we know, at least for starters, is: here we- so incontrovertibly- are. This is our life, these are our lighted seasons, and then we die. In the meantime, in between time, we can see. The scales are fallen from our eyes, the cataracts are cut away, and we can work at making sense of the color-patches we see in an effort to discover where we so incontrovertibly are. I am as passionately interested in where I am as is a lone sailor sans sextant in a ketch on an open ocean. I have at the moment a situation which allows me to devote considerable hunks of time to seeing what I can see, and trying to piece it together. I’ve learned the name of some color-patches, but not the meanings. I’ve read books; I’ve gathered statistics feverishly: the average temperature of our planet is 57 degrees F…The average size of all living animals, including man, is almost that of a housefly. The earth is mostly granite, which is mostly oxygen…In these Appalachians we have found a coal bed with 120 seams, meaning 120 forests that just happened to fall into water…I would like to see it all, to understand it, but I must start somewhere, so I try to deal with the giant water bug in Tinker Creek and the flight of three hundred redwings from an Osage orange and let those who dare worry about the birthrate and population explosion among solar systems. So I think about the valley. And it occurs to me more and more that everything I have seen is wholly gratuitous. The giant water bug’s predations, the frog’s croak, the tree with the lights in it are not in any real sense necessary per se to the world or its creator. Nor am I. The creation in the first place, being itself, is the only necessity for which I would die, and I shall. The point about that being, as I know it here and see it, is that as I think about it, it accumulates in my mind as an extravagance of minutiae. The sheer fringe and network of detail assumes primary importance. That there are so many details seems to be the most important and visible fact about creation. If you can’t see the forest for the trees, then look at the trees; when you’ve looked at enough trees, you’ve seen a forest, you’ve got it. If the world is gratuitous, then the fringe of a goldfish’s fin is a million times more so. The first question- the one crucial one- of the creation of the universe and the existence of something as a sign and an affront to nothing is a blank one… The old Kabbalistic phrase is “the Mystery of the Splintering of the Vessels.” The words refer to the shrinking or imprisonment of essences within the various husk-covered forms of emanation or time. The Vessels splintered and solar systems spun; ciliated rotifers whirled in still water, and newts laid tracks in the silt-bottomed creek. Not only did the Vessels splinter; they splintered exceeding fine. Intricacy then is the subject, the intricacy of the created world.

WHAT IS SUCCESS AND FAILURE – Today there are many definitions what success means however people practice short cuts to success for me success is simple I understood the real truth there are no short cuts to success when I understand my limitation and many matters of success are directly related to our hard work There is no greater success than to have Faith in spite of adversity, criticism Love in spite of hatefulness of others and compassion for ignorance, My tolerance to life has increased when I learnt to tolerate the ignorance Today many do not put hard work to succeed and live by chances to attain the success So the bottom line is that people don’t use enough resources and do not believe in Time management I realised late that success and failures are my own creation however we blame others for our failures Dr.T.V.Rao MD Free thinker

Everyone at school has their little group. Even the people nobody likes seem to tolerate each other enough to sit together at lunch. But I just sort of wander around by myself most of the time. It'd almost be better if I thought no one liked me, if I had some weird tick or social inadequacy that could easily explain my alienation, but it's not that easy. People talk to me at school and invite me to parties, but something's missing on the smaller scale. I don't belong to anybody. I don't have anyone who is mine

To go beyond Hegel is a miracle, but to get beyond Abraham is the easiest thing of all. I for my part have devoted a good deal of time to the understanding of the Hegelian philosophy, I believe also that I understand it tolerably well, but when in spite of the trouble I have taken there are certain passages I cannot understand, I am foolhardy enough to think that he himself has not been quite clear. All

they want them to be happy. Happy! Not empathetic contributing members of society. Not humble, wise and tolerant. Not strong in the face of adversity or grateful in the face of misfortune. I, on the other hand, have always wanted hardship for my kids. Real, honest hardship. Challenges big enough to make them empathetic and wise.

Self-Analysis Questionnaire for Personal Inventory. 1.   Have I attained the goal which I established as my objective for this year? (You should work with a definite yearly objective to be attained as a part of your major life objective.) 2.   Have I delivered service of the best possible quality of which I was capable, or could I have improved any part of this service? 3. Have I delivered service in the greatest possible quantity of which I was capable? 4. Has the spirit of my conduct been harmonious and cooperative at all times? 5. Have I permitted the habit of procrastination to decrease my efficiency, and if so, to what extent? 6. Have I improved my personality, and if so, in what ways? 7. Have I been persistent in following my plans through to completion? 8. Have I reached decisions promptly and definitely on all occasions? 9. Have I permitted any one or more of the six basic fears to decrease my efficiency? 10. Have I been either over-cautious, or under-cautious? 11. Has my relationship with my associates in work been pleasant, or unpleasant? If it has been unpleasant, has the fault been partly, or wholly mine? 12. Have I dissipated any of my energy through lack of concentration of effort? 13. Have I been open-minded and tolerant in connection with all subjects? 14. In what way have I improved my ability to render service? 15. Have I been intemperate in any of my habits? 16. Have I expressed, either openly or secretly, any form of egotism? 17. Has my conduct toward my associates been such that it has induced them to respect me? 18. Have my opinions and decisions been based upon guesswork, or accuracy of analysis and thought? 19. Have I followed the habit of budgeting my time, my expenses, and my income, and have I been conservative in these budgets? 20. How much time have I devoted to unprofitable effort which I might have used to better advantage? 21. How may I re-budget my time, and change my habits so I will be more efficient during the coming year? 22. Have I been guilty of any conduct which was not approved by my conscience? 23. In what ways have I rendered more service and better service than I was paid to render? 24. Have I been unfair to anyone, and if so, in what way? 25. If I had been the purchaser of my own services for the year, would I be satisfied with my purchase? 26. Am I in the right vocation, and if not, why not? 27. Has the purchaser of my services been satisfied with the service I have rendered, and if not, why not? 28. What is my present rating on the fundamental principles of success? (Make this rating fairly and frankly, and have it checked by someone who is courageous enough to do it accurately.)

I acknowledge I haven’t always been my own best friend, and I certainly haven’t always been my own strongest advocate. I’ve lingered too long in toxic relationships and I’ve told myself to put up with things I’d tell a friend not to tolerate. ‘I promise to listen to myself, to take the time to hear the voice in my gut, because I know myself better than anyone and I always have my own best interests at heart. I’m wise enough to know when someone is disingenuous and I know when enough is enough. I also know that I am enough, and I’m brave, and I will succeed. I won’t judge myself too harshly when I get things wrong because everyone gets things wrong sometimes, but I won’t let myself off the hook without learning lessons, either.

Have I not made it obvious enough? I am in love with you, Delilah Gange. Foolishly, ardently, and madly. I must face the demons I have been running from for years now. And look how well the stars aligned and the planets spun on their axis the other way for us to meet here and make our love known for each other. I am in love you and I have learnt to live with it for a long time like I tolerated and learnt to accept the blood coursing through my veins is not ichor. I cannot imagine living like this anymore, in silent suffering. Waiting for a love to grow without tending to it.

Just call her. People do too much by phones and apps. It’s terrible for the human mind. Apps are ruining society.” “And yet those same apps have made you a rich man.” “Why do you think I’m so grumpy all the time? It’s not about turning thirty. I may be having an existential crisis.” “I’m sorry to hear that,” Drew said. “I bought this house with blood money,” Alan said. “I’m not sure that’s what blood money means.” Drew patted his chest. “And I should know. Everything Dad and I purchase is bought with blood money. Teeth bleed. Gums bleed. It’s all blood money.” “Stop trying to make me laugh. I’m turning thirty, and I’ve done nothing but contribute to the further destruction of society’s fabric. I don’t want to feel better.” “Get used to it. When Megan comes over, you’re going to have to lighten up. She doesn’t tolerate people feeling sorry for themselves and moping around. It’s one of the many things I love about her.” Alan raised an eyebrow. “Love?” “Sure,” Drew said, lifting his chin. “I love many things about her. I may even love her.” “Good for you,” Alan said. “I’m happy for you, bro.” He put the marble cheese platters into the fridge to chill then sighed. “Now I know what I forgot,” he said to the closed fridge door. “Flowers. What kind of animal throws a dinner party with no fresh flowers?” Drew rubbed his temples. “I’m sending a psychic message to Megan. I’m asking her to bring over some flowers from the shop.” “You’re crazy.” Drew closed his eyes. “I’ve got a good feeling about this. Megan and I got off to a bad start, but we’ve had excellent, clear communication with each other since then.” “Clear enough for psychic messages?” “Can’t hurt to try. What’s the worst that could happen?

Swami Shankarananda of Melbourne, Australia, offers this definition: “In the late sixties when spirituality arose within me for the first time, I could have said (had I enough awareness), ‘I’d like a path that is as spacious as the universe. A path that includes everyone and every possible belief system. A path that is as tolerant and forgiving as a mother, yet as precise and on-purpose as a brain surgeon. A path whose mode of thinking is so broad that no thought or idea is left outside of it. A path of inner transformation and self-development. A path of truth that is also a path of kindness. A path whose love is so deep and all-embracing that no sinner is excluded from its mercy. A path whose source is Universal Consciousness.’ Had I been able to formulate those thoughts that were in me in an inchoate way, perhaps the sky would have parted and a voice from on high might have said, ‘Your path is Hinduism.

I know I will never see that smile the same way again, it will never bring me instant comfort nor warm my soul the same again. I know I will miss the flood of emotions that released for your touch to point of dehydration. I will miss the small, pulsating, vibrations running through my body as your voice ricochet in my ear. I will miss the beauty I saw in your pain as you took me on a journey through your soul, thu conversations I will miss our inner child's spontaneous and planned play dates. I will miss the silence in my mind commanded by you taking the lead. I will miss daydreaming about loving you forever, because I still had an ounce of hope leftover after a lifetime of searching for you. I will miss you forgiving me after, I recovered from a trigger, never appreciated the punishment that came with it tho. I will miss not being able to protect your heart from the pain I recognize, that your ego guards from your souls innocents that your mind can't tolerate yet. I will miss the feeling I felt knowing you could really be here with me forever because the exchange of laughter, wisdom and moments never ended. I will miss loving the man you are now in life, because even without the potential I see, you are worthy just as you are . I will miss things about you that you will never know, it was never about status or statuses I didn't want the spotlight, I wanted to be behind the scenes. I just wanted to support and love you. I wanted to guide you through parts of life that almost broke me, that I see you encountering. I will miss having somewhere to pour almost all of me. I will miss the possibility of being loved forever, I know I felt it though the roughness of your sore hands as I caressed trying to alleviate the pain. I will miss your grumpy days and I still regret not knowing how to comfort you on the hardest ones. I will miss who I sometimes selfishly dreamed I could be if you could just love me in the way I could feel. I'd dream of waiting for u to get home, (its the one we talked about getting after winning the lottery) . In that moment I swear it was the first time my soul wanted another day voluntarily. I will miss you not understanding my text, but we would see eye to eye when they physically met. I will miss you teaching me, and correcting me softly. I will miss you being gentle, when I didn't even know I needed it. I know it was hard sometimes. I will miss how you kept things together, always calm and steady, I was the complete opposite, clumsy and messy. You were everything I wasn't, and I loved you for that the most. I will miss thinking of you as my sun, and I will miss you calling me Starr I will miss loving you beyond myself. I will miss all those moments I wanted to pull u into me and just feel you and kiss you. I wanted you all the time, it took so much to hold back from showing you, it was out of fear of rejection of not being enough. I SHOULD of done it, would of got to this point faster. I regret not loving you with all me authenticly. I will miss what never was a friend, but everything I never had In one

If you ask me, everyone is a little too interested in their children’s happiness. Ask anyone what they wish for their kids and they’ll all say they want them to be happy. Happy! Not empathetic contributing members of society. Not humble, wise and tolerant. Not strong in the face of adversity or grateful in the face of misfortune. I, on the other hand, have always wanted hardship for my kids. Real, honest hardship. Challenges big enough to make them empathetic and wise.

I spent several months working with him, and did it in a more structured manner than previously—having, in the interim, developed the tools to do so. This client could only communicate a little at the beginning of our work together, but that was enough to start the ball rolling. Some girl at the college had developed a crush on him. He informed her that her romantic interest was not reciprocated. She became exceedingly vindictive, and set out to make his life hell. She spread rumors about his sexual habits. She encouraged some of her male friends to physically threaten him at school. She had people on hand to humiliate him constantly and unmercifully in transit to and from campus. Noting his distress, his parents alerted the school, but nothing was done to stop the ongoing torment. Unable or unwilling to tolerate the mounting peer pressure, the friends he had only recently made began to avoid and then entirely abandoned him. He began to break down, and as his behavior became stranger, his outcast status was cemented into place. And he broke.

He was convinced that if the attack on Omando had caused such interest in the world it was not so much because of the victim’s importance, but because fear, resentment and repeated disillusion in the age of slavery and radiation death had in the end branded the hearts of millions of human beings with an edge of misanthropy, which made them follow with sympathy, and perhaps some feeling of personal re- venge, the story of '‘the man who had changed species.” He turned toward Laurent with sympathy. It was difficult not to like that generous, slightly sing-song voice, not to like that black giant who spoke so frankly about himself when he thought he was speaking only of the African fauna. inclined to a gentle skepticism which usually sufficed to protect him both against excessive illusions about human nature and against excessive doubt of it a sort of Saint Francis of Assisi, only more energetic, more dashing, more muscular he had the greatest respect for humor, because it was one of the best weapons ever forged by man for the struggle against himself. devoured by some ravenous dream of hygiene and universal health who desperately pursue a certain ideal of human decency, call it tolerance, justice or liberty The idea, too, that people who have suffered too much aren’t any longer capable of ... of complicity with you, for that’s what it amounts to. That they aren’t any longer capable of playing ball with us. The idea that they’ve somehow been spoiled once for all. It was partly on account of this idea that the German theorists of racialism preached the extermination of the Jews; they had been made to suffer too much, and therefore they could not be anything after that but enemies of the human race. A man can’t spend his life in Africa without acquiring something pretty close to a great affection for the elephants. Those great herds are, after all, the last symbol of liberty left among us. It s something that’s fast disappearing, from more points of view than one. Every time you come upon them in the open, moving their trunks and their great ears, an irresistible smile rises to your lips. I defy anyone to look upon elephants without a sense of wonder. Their very enormity, their, clumsiness, their giant stature, represent a mass of liberty that sets you dreaming. They’re . . . yes, they’re the last individuals. a trace of superiority, of condescension toward me, as though to point out to me that this was obviously something I could not understand, a private and secret world which I was not permitted to enter. Yes, there are some among us who are fighting for the independence of Africa. But why? To protect the elephants. To take the protection of African fauna into their own hands. Perhaps for them elephants are only an image of their own liberty. That suits me: liberty always suits me. Personally, I have no patience with nationalism: the new or the old, the white or the black, the red or the yellow. They aim between the eyes, just because it’s big, free and beautiful. That’s what they call a fine shot. A trophy. people have been seized by such a need for friendship and company that the dogs can’t manage it. We’ve been asking too much of them. The job has broken them down— they’ve had it. Just think how long they’ve been doing their damnedest for us, wagging their tails and holding out their paws— they’ve had enough . . .’ It’s natural: they’ve seen too much. And the people feel lonely and deserted, and they need something bigger that can really take the strain. Dogs aren’t enough any more; men need elephants. ‘Look here, my friend, for three years I was a bus conductor in Paris. I recommend it during rush hours; it gave me what you might call a knowledge of human nature— a good, solid knowledge which prompted me to change sides and go over to the elephants. there was around him an air of authenticity impossible to disregard: the authenticity of sheer physical nobility

It is satisfying, of course, to build up a supply of winter warmth, free except for the labor. But there is also something heady about becoming a part of the forest process. It sounds straightforward enough to say that when I cut firewood I cull and thin my woods, but that puts me in the business of deciding which trees should be encouraged and which should be taken. I like my great tall black walnut, so I have cut the trees around it to give it the space and light it needs to grow generously. Dogwoods don’t care. They frost the woods with white blossoms in the spring, and grow extravagantly in close company. If I clear a patch, within a year or two pine seedlings move in, grow up exuberantly, compete and thin themselves to tolerable spacing. If I don’t cut a diseased tree, its neighbors may sicken and die. If I cut away one half of a forked white oak, the remaining trunk will grow straight and sturdy. Sap gone, a standing dead tree like the one I cut today will make good firewood, and so invites cutting. But if I leave it, it will make a home for woodpeckers, and later for flying squirrels and screech owls. Where I leave a brush pile of top branches, rabbits make a home. If I leave a fallen tree, others will benefit: ants, spiders, beetles and wood roaches will use it for shelter and food, and lovely delicate fungi will grow out of it before it mixes with leaf mold to become a part of a new layer of soil. One person with a chain saw makes a difference in the woods, and by making a difference becomes part of the woodland cycle, a part of the abstraction that is the forest community.

Possibilities of a Day in the Open.—I make a point, says a judicious mother, of sending my children out, weather permitting, for an hour in the winter, and two hours a day in the summer months. That is well; but it is not enough. In the first place, do not send them; if it is anyway possible, take them; for, although the children should be left much to themselves, there is a great deal to be done and a great deal to be prevented during these long hours in the open air. And long hours they should be; not two, but four, five, or six hours they should have on every tolerably fine day, from April till October. Impossible! Says an overwrought mother who sees her way to no more for her children than a daily hour or so on the pavements of the neighbouring London squares. Let me repeat, that I venture to suggest, not what is practicable in any household, but what seems to me absolutely best for the children; and that, in the faith that mothers work wonders once they are convinced that wonders are demanded of them. A journey of twenty minutes by rail or omnibus, and a luncheon basket, will make a day in the country possible to most town dwellers; and if one day, why not many, even every suitable day?

Merripen,” Cam said slowly, “you’re going to have to find a way to tolerate me. Because there are things I can do for Amelia, and the rest of them, that you can’t.” He continued in a level tone despite the look on Merripen’s face, which would have terrified a lesser man. “And I don’t have the patience to battle you every step of the way. If you want what’s best for them, either leave, or accept this. I’m not going anywhere.” As the huge chal glared at him, Cam could almost see the progression of his thoughts, the weighing of options, the violent desire to mow down his enemy, all of it overshadowed by the urge to do what was right for his family. “Besides,” Cam said, “if Amelia doesn’t marry me, the gadjo will be after her again. And you know she’ll be better off with me.” Merripen’s eyes narrowed. “Frost broke her heart. You took her innocence. Why does that make you any better?” “Because I’m not going to leave her. Unlike the gadjos, the Rom are faithful to our women.” Cam paused and measured out five seconds before adding deliberately, “You probably know that better than I.” Merripen fixed his furious gaze at a point in the distance. “If you hurt her in any way…” he finally said, “I’m going to kill you.” “Fair enough.” “I may kill you anyway.” Cam smiled slightly. “You’d be surprised how many people have said that to me before.” “No,” Merripen said, “I wouldn’t.

What else did her mother tell you?” Ethan asked, looking for any advantage in his task of winning her over. “That she’d call us later and give us pointers on wooing her daughter. Apparently, Naomi has something of a stubborn nature.” A snort escaped him. “I hadn’t noticed.” Javier paced the living room as Ethan stroked Naomi’s silky hair, unable to resist running his fingers through the long brown strands. “What are you thinking?” “That fate is laughing at me.” A chuckle made Ethan’s chest vibrate, causing Naomi’s head to jiggle. He cradled her head in his big palm to prevent her from falling before replying. “She’s certainly not what either of us expected, that’s for sure.” Javier shot him a dark look. “No shit, Sherlock. I mean don’t get me wrong, short and curvy works fine for me, but I always expected, if ever fate was cruel enough to curse me, she’d at least give me a woman who likes me.” “I’m sure she will in time. We took her by surprise, not to mention she’s in pain. Besides, I kind of like that she’s feisty. She’ll need it to keep up with us.” Round eyes and an open mouth met his answer. “You, my friend, are insane. One ball too many to the head I think. I mean, not only does she not want you, shouldn’t you be more pissed that it looks like she’s meant for both of us?” Ethan shrugged. “I’ll admit, I never expected to share, but if fate says that’s my lot, then at least it chose someone I could tolerate. And beat in a wrestling match if I need to. Besides, I’ll only have to share if you bother to stick around to mark her.” “Oh, I’m staying, so you can forget about keeping her for yourself,” Javier replied shooting him a dark look. “What happened to I’m not meant for monogamy?” Ethan pitched his voice mockingly. A sigh emerged from Javier’s mouth before he slumped in the chair across from him. “I haven’t thought that far ahead. It’s hard to think at all with my damned cat yammering for me to bite her. Mayhap if you were to claim her first, the need for me to do so would vanish?” The optimism in his friend’s voice made him laugh again. “Sorry, no such luck I’m afraid. From everything I’ve ever heard, once you find the one, you’re done for. The need to mark her, claim her, just gets stronger and stronger.” Already the urge to take her rode Ethan hard. It didn’t help that he held her cuddled on his lap, her sweet fragrance tickling his nose while her lush body pressed against his turgid cock.

I’m sure you will be pleased to learn that I have heeded your advice and finally chosen a bride,” he said smoothly. “Although I have not yet made a formal proposal to her, I have good reason to believe that she will accept when I do.” The countess blinked in surprise, her composure faltering. Livia stared at him with a wondering smile. There was a sudden wicked enjoyment in her eyes that inclined Marcus to think she had guessed at the identity of the unnamed bride. “How lovely,” she said. “Have you finally found someone who will tolerate you, Marcus?” He grinned back at her. “It would seem so. Though I suspect it would behoove me to hasten the wedding plans before she comes to her senses and flees.” “Nonsense,” the countess said sharply. “No woman would flee from the prospect of marrying the Earl of Westcliff. You possess the most ancient title in England. On the day you marry, you will bestow on your wife more peerage dignities than any uncrowned head on the face of the earth. Now, tell me whom you have decided on.” “Miss Lillian Bowman.” The countess made a disgusted sound. “Enough of this witless humor, Westcliff. Tell me the girl’s name.” Livia fairly wriggled with delight. Beaming at Marcus, she leaned closer to her mother and said in a loud stage whisper, “I think he’s serious, Mother. It really is Miss Bowman.” “It cannot be!” The countess looked aghast. One could practically see the capillaries bursting in her cheeks. “I demand that you renounce this piece of insanity, Westcliff, and come to your senses. I will not have that atrocious creature as my daughter-in-law!” “But you will,” Marcus said inexorably. “You could have your pick of any girl here or on the continent… girls of acceptable lineage and bearing…” “Miss Bowman is the one I want.” “She could never fit into the mold of a Marsden wife.” “Then the mold will have to be broken.” -Marcus, Livia, & their mother

seeing pictures of pretty clothes in Jackie magazine that she’d never be able to buy. She’d hated seeing adverts for summer holidays on the telly, in far off places they’d never be able to visit. She hated seeing the Queen giving her ruddy speech from her golden palace, the likes of which she’d never know. What made them so much better? Soon enough, she’d realised that all those people she envied weren’t better, they were just smarter. They’d educated themselves and taken whatever chances came their way, to get ahead in life. The problem was, she didn’t even have GCEs. That’s when she’d enrolled in night school, and Simon had tagged along too. She’d always been the one to push him on, she thought, with a sad little sigh. “Looks like she’s going to pull through,” Mike said, interrupting her reverie. Everything about her husband was an irritant, and had been since they were children knocking about in the playground. Michael Emerson had been a poser all his life; a flirt, a braggart, a man other men tolerated but did not necessarily like. Living with him had been a penance, and she’d paid it for long enough. “I want a divorce,” she said, very clearly. She heard his shocked intake of breath, and he shifted in the driver’s seat to look at her. “What?” he blustered. “What are you talking about?” “Oh, come on, Mike. You know there’s nothing between us. There hasn’t been for a long time.” Ever. He sat in absolute silence for long, tense seconds as she stared out of the windscreen and watched a light drizzle coat the glass. “You haven’t thought this through,” he said, but didn’t bother to argue with the sentiment. His girlfriend had been asking for him to get a divorce for months, now, but he’d never actually planned to go through with it. Their lives were too entwined. Too dependent. “You need me,” he said, simply. “It’ll look bad for your next campaign.” Sally laughed. “I need you?” she said bitterly, but stopped herself from launching into a tirade, not wanting to go too far. “Listen, Mike. This can work for both of us,” she said, in a placatory tone. “We can sell up and share the proceeds. We can still work together as business partners.” “Oh, aye,” he said. “What about your new partner? What would he have to say about that?” Sally said nothing. “Well, he needs me too. You both do,” Mike said, arrogantly, and turned the

I had dropped more or less by chance into the only community of any size in Western Europe where political consciousness and disbelief in capitalism were more normal than their opposites. Up here in Aragon one was among tens of thousands of people, mainly though not entirely of working-class origin, all living at the same level and mingling on terms of equality. In theory it was perfect equality, and even in practice it was not far from it. There is a sense in which it would be true to say that one was experiencing a foretaste of Socialism, by which I mean that the prevailing mental atmosphere was that of Socialism. Many of the normal motives of civilized life — snobbishness, money-grubbing, fear of the boss, etc. — had simply ceased to exist. The ordinary class-division of society had disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in the money — tainted air of England; there was no one there except the peasants and ourselves, and no one owned anyone else as his master. Of course such a state of affairs could not last. It was simply a temporary and local phase in an enormous game that is being played over the whole surface of the earth. But it lasted long enough to have its effect upon anyone who experienced it. However much one cursed at the time, one realized afterwards that one had been in contact with something strange and valuable. One had been in a community where hope was more normal than apathy or cynicism, where the word ‘comrade’ stood for comradeship and not, as in most countries, for humbug. One had breathed the air of equality. I am well aware that it is now the fashion to deny that Socialism has anything to do with equality. In every country in the world a huge tribe of party-hacks and sleek little professors are busy ‘proving’ that Socialism means no more than a planned state-capitalism with the grab-motive left intact. But fortunately there also exists a vision of Socialism quite different from this. The thing that attracts ordinary men to Socialism and makes them willing to risk their skins for it, the ‘mystique’ of Socialism, is the idea of equality; to the vast majority of people Socialism means a classless society, or it means nothing at all. And it was here that those few months in the militia were valuable to me. For the Spanish militias, while they lasted, were a sort of microcosm of a classless society. In that community where no one was on the make, where there was a shortage of everything but no privilege and no boot-licking, one got, perhaps, a crude forecast of what the opening stages of Socialism might be like. And, after all, instead of disillusioning me it deeply attracted me. The effect was to make my desire to see Socialism established much more actual than it had been before. Partly, perhaps, this was due to the good luck of being among Spaniards, who, with their innate decency and their ever-present Anarchist tinge, would make even the opening stages of Socialism tolerable if they had the chance.

He was, I realize now, one of the least ideological people I ever met: everything that happened to him he took as a particular case, unable or unwilling to generalize from it. He lost his livelihood but did not lose faith in his country. The education system failed him but he still revered it and placed all his hopes for his children in it. His relations with women were mostly disastrous but he did not hate women. In his mind he did not marry a black girl, he married "Yvonne," and he did not have an experimental set of mixed-race children, he had me and my brother Ben and my brother Luke. How rare such people are! I am not so naive even now as to believe we have enough of them at any one time in history to form a decent and tolerant society. But neither will I ever deny their existence or the possibility of lives like his. He was a member of the white working class, a man often afflicted by despair who still managed to retain a core optimism. Perhaps in a different time under different cultural influences living in a different society he would have become one of the rabid old angry white men of whom the present left is so afeared. As it was, born in 1925 and dying in 2006, he saw his children benefit from the civilized postwar protections of free education and free health care, and felt he had many reasons to be grateful.

Today, however, we must develop a new mindfulness about how our everyday actions affect the physical and living world around us. In this book I argue that we can no longer tolerate actions that degrade our local environment; there are simply too many of us for the earth to sustain the cumulative impact. A neutral impact is not good enough, either, for we no longer have the option of leaving things in their current degraded state. We must now act collectively to put our ecosystems back together again.

The most spiritual human beings, if we assume that they are the most courageous, also experience by far the most painful tragedies: but just for that reason they honor life because it pits its greatest opposition against them. 18 On the "intellectual conscience." — Nothing seems rarer to me today than genuine hypocrisy. I greatly suspect that the soft air of our culture is insalubrious for this plant. Hypocrisy belongs in the ages of strong faith when, even though constrained to display another faith, one did not abandon one's own faith. Today one does abandon it; or, even more commonly, one adds a second faith — and in either case one remains honest. Without a doubt, a very much greater number of convictions is possible today than formerly: "possible" means permissible, which means harmless. This begets tolerance toward oneself. Tolerance toward oneself permits several convictions and they get along with each other: they are careful, like all the rest of the world, not to compromise themselves. How does one compromise oneself today? If one is consistent. If one proceeds in a straight line. If one is not ambiguous enough to permit five conflicting interpretations. If one is genuine. I fear greatly that modern man is simply too comfortable for some vices, so that they die out by default. All evil that is a function of a strong will — and perhaps there is no evil without strength of will — degenerates into virtue in our tepid air. The few hypocrites whom I have met imitated hypocrisy: like almost every tenth person today, they were actors.

I really believed that computers were deterministic, that you could understand what they were supposed to do, and that there was no excuse for computers not working, for things not functioning properly. In retrospect, I was surprisingly good at keeping the system running, putting in new code and having it not break the system. That was the first instance of something I got an undeserved reputation for. I know that my boss, and probably some other of my colleagues, have said I was a great debugger. And that's partly true. But there's a fake in there. Really what I was was a very careful programmer with the arrogance to believe that very few computer programs are inherently difficult. I would take some piece of code that didn't look like it was working and I would try to read it. And if I could understand, then I could usually see what was wrong or poke around with it and fix it. But sometimes I would get a piece of code—often one that other people couldn't make work—and I would say, “This is way too complicated.” So I would think through what it was supposed to do, throw it away, and write it again from scratch. Some of the folks I worked with—like Will Crowther—who are terrific programmers, couldn't tolerate that. They would believe that by doing that, I would probably have fixed the 2 bugs that were there and introduced 27 new bugs. But the fact is, I was good at that. So I would rewrite stuff completely and it would be organized differently than the original programmer had organized it because I had thought about the problem differently. Typically, it was simpler than it used to be, or at least simpler to my eyes. And it would work. So I got this reputation—I fixed these mysterious bugs that nobody else could fix. Fortunately, they never asked me what the bug was. Because the truth of the matter is if they'd have asked, “How did you fix the bug?” my answer would have been, “I couldn't understand the code well enough to figure out what it was doing, so I rewrote it.

I really believed that computers were deterministic, that you could understand what they were supposed to do, and that there was no excuse for computers not working, for things not functioning properly. In retrospect, I was surprisingly good at keeping the system running, putting in new code and having it not break the system. That was the first instance of something I got an undeserved reputation for. I know that my boss, and probably some other of my colleagues, have said I was a great debugger. And that's partly true. But there's a fake in there. Really what I was was a very careful programmer with the arrogance to believe that very few computer programs are inherently difficult. I would take some piece of code that didn't look like it was working and I would try to read it. And if I could understand, then I could usually see what was wrong or poke around with it and fix it. But sometimes I would get a piece of code—often one that other people couldn't make work—and I would say, “This is way too complicated.” So I would think through what it was supposed to do, throw it away, and write it again from scratch. Some of the folks I worked with—like Will Crowther—who are terrific programmers, couldn't tolerate that. They would believe that by doing that, I would probably have fixed the 2 bugs that were there and introduced 27 new bugs. But the fact is, I was good at that. So I would rewrite stuff completely and it would be organized differently than the original programmer had organized it because I had thought about the problem differently. Typically, it was simpler than it used to be, or at least simpler to my eyes. And it would work. So I got this reputation—I fixed these mysterious bugs that nobody else could fix. Fortunately, they never asked me what the bug was. Because the truth of the matter is if they'd have asked, “How did you fix the bug?” my answer would have been, “I couldn't understand the code well enough to figure out what it was doing, so I rewrote it.” I did that a lot on the PDP-1 time-sharing system. There were chunks of the code that I would read and would say, “This doesn't do what I think this part of the program is supposed to be doing,” or “It's weird.” So I'd rewrite it. The only thing that kept me working there, with that attitude, was that I had a good track record. That's one of the things, that if you're not good at it, you make chaos. But if you are good at it, the world thinks that you can do things that you can't, really.

It’s important to understand that computers have no tolerance for ambiguity. Once programmers spend enough time socializing with computers (i.e. programming), they tend to develop the same intolerance.

The best hope for the world is secular government. There are enough real causes of social conflict on this planet without the manufactured cause of religious divisiveness. In a democratic, egalitarian society, we should embrace the freedom to disagree about religious opinions, which also means we should denounce the freedom to ask our government to settle the argument. The government, at all levels, must diligently remain neutral. Working to keep state and church separate is a task that is crucial to preserving tolerance and peace, and the only way to have a “heaven on earth.” It is certainly a more practical mission than what I was doing for 19 years: trying to usher people into an imaginary heaven.

Anne," said Jane, still more solemnly, "what do you think of my brother Billy?" Anne gasped over this unexpected question, and floundered helplessly in her thoughts. Goodness, what DID she think of Billy Andrews? She had never thought ANYTHING about him—round-faced, stupid, perpetually smiling, good-natured Billy Andrews. Did ANYBODY ever think about Billy Andrews? "I—I don't understand, Jane," she stammered. "What do you mean—exactly?" "Do you like Billy?" asked Jane bluntly. "Why—why—yes, I like him, of course," gasped Anne, wondering if she were telling the literal truth. Certainly she did not DISlike Billy. But could the indifferent tolerance with which she regarded him, when he happened to be in her range of vision, be considered positive enough for liking? WHAT was Jane trying to elucidate? "Would you like him for a husband?" asked Jane calmly. "A husband!" Anne had been sitting up in bed, the better to wrestle with the problem of her exact opinion of Billy Andrews. Now she fell flatly back on her pillows, the very breath gone out of her. "Whose husband?" "Yours, of course," answered Jane. "Billy wants to marry you. He's always been crazy about you—and now father has given him the upper farm in his own name and there's nothing to prevent him from getting married. But he's so shy he couldn't ask you himself if you'd have him, so he got me to do it. I'd rather not have, but he gave me no peace till I said I would, if I got a good chance. What do you think about it, Anne?

May your marriage bring you all the exquisite excitements a marriage should bring, and may life grant you also patience, tolerance, and understanding. May you always need one another—not so much to fill your emptiness as to help you to know your fullness. A mountain needs a valley to be complete. The valley does not make the mountain less, but more. And the valley is more a valley because it has a mountain towering over it. So let it be with you and you. May you need one another, but not out of weakness. May you want one another, but not out of lack. May you entice one another, but not compel one another. May you embrace one another, but not encircle one another. “May you succeed in all-important ways with one another, and not fail in the little graces. May you look for things to praise, often say, “I love you!” and take no notice of small faults. If you have quarrels that push you apart, may both of you hope to have good sense enough to take the first step back. May you enter into the mystery that is the awareness of one another’s presence—no more physical than spiritual, warm and near when you are side by side, and warm and near when you are in separate rooms or even distant cities. May you have happiness, and may you find it making one another happy. May you have love, and may you find it loving one another.

Here’s your breakfast nugget: Affirm it and receive it, only if it’s for you. Feel free to: Like, Tag and share! Deuteronomy 2:3 — “You have circled this mountain long enough. Now turn north.” You have done this thing… this sin, this cycle, this abuse, this tolerance, this disrespect, this narcissistic way so many times. When are you going to stop and turn in another direction? If you are tired of the same cycles and patterns repeat this and mean it. Say it, post it, repeat it daily until it’s real in your life. “The cycle ends with me. I am the interruption hell didn’t see coming.” “This morning, I heard the Spirit whisper: ‘You’ve seen this before, but this time you’ll respond differently. This time, you’ll walk away healed, not haunted.’ Cycles don’t end when circumstances change—they end when your response does.” Read that again!

Record of White Crimes Against Humanity (White Fragility Sonnets 1308-1310) Whiteness has done more harm to the world than good, Till you look past your whiteness, you cannot be human. Orange 'n musky trash of white privilege diss diversity, What else would you expect from colonial descendants! Every generation has its fraudsters like Edison, Every generation has trashy maniacs like Columbus. Every generation has war-merchants like Kissinger, Every generation has its churchillian doofus. White people tortured the Africans, White people booted Native Americans; White people massacred the Vietnamese, White people lynched and looted the Indians. White people caused genocide after genocide, Yet you still boast about white superiority. You proclaim that people of color are inferior, While white society is the epitome of savagery. If devil had a color, it would be white - Yet I say, color is nonsense, we're all equal. I am human enough to give you place beside me, All I expect is that, a human behaves human. After all the heartaches inflicted by white people, A 100 generations worth apology won't be sufficient. Yet I am human enough to declare, we are all equal; All I ask is that, humans finally behave human. They say, I'm spreading hate against the whites; To which I say, human making is my mission. There is no hope for humanitarian uplift, Unless you renounce all fragile intoleration. If you wanna learn about tolerance, ask a person of color, How do you even tolerate the sight of white people, when the wrongs done to you by whites are unparalleled in history! You'll realize, there's no mythical secret to integration, For ages we've known no other life but of inclusivity. Middle East, India and Far East, have been the melting pot of integration, before the whites even knew what integration is. Yet you say white people are superior - so be it; Cowards always take refuge in fairytales, to justify their fragility and prejudice. If you wanna be a decent human being, Never draw moral parameters from the west. No matter whether you're born of east or west, Remember, you are human first, then all else. To recognize diversity is science, To celebrate diversity is humanity. To recognize privilege is common sense, To abandon privilege builds human society.

Prototype Human (Sonnet 2249) The pen is my paradise, the pen is my grave. Everybody has all the answers, I seem to have only questions. Good thing, I don't know how to write, methods are obstacle to my madness. I'm vast enough to contain the world, asylum pills don't work on pilgrim brains. My pen never runs out of ink, because the pen is an extension of my anatomy. Madness is the first sign of sanity, oneness is the seed of infinity. Stereotypes are sanity of the jungle, prejudice is sacred in the animal kingdom. Flags are the poison, cosmos is (my) kin - I am no stereotype, I am the Prototype Human.

Let’s call it what it is and let’s vote on these things. I think we’re in violation of both the spirit and the law of the Constitution by bombing a capital, blockading a country, and removing elected officials. We certainly wouldn’t tolerate it, nor would I if someone did it to us. Our founders debated extensively over which branch of government should have the power to declare or initiate war. Virtually unanimously they decided, and what was entered into the Constitution, was that the declaration or initiation of war would be the power of Congress. There are many advocates for an expansive notion of presidential power. They often argue that wars are not really wars, that they’re kinetic actions or drug busts. If you reverse the circumstances it becomes very difficult for these arguments to hold up. If a foreign country bombed our air defense missiles, captured and removed our president, and blockaded our country, would that be considered an act of war? Of course it would be an act of war. One-way arguments that don’t rebound, that you can’t apply to yourselves, that cannot be universally applicable, are bad arguments. If it’s not a war and we’re just going to define it away, then calling it a drug bust isn’t really an argument. It’s a ruse. Not a war is a ruse. It’s not a real argument. We do what we do because we have the force and the might, and because it’s in our interest. What if a foreign country indicts our president for violating a foreign law? Should we extradite our president, or should we be okay if they come in and get him by force? We would never allow that. The Office of Legal Counsel argument is that this wasn’t a constitutional war because not enough people died. But the problem is it isn’t the number. It happens in retrospect. Our founders gave Congress the power to initiate or declare war. If we have to wait to see the scope, nature, and extent, then the war has already been going on. It’s hard to vote to initiate a war that’s been going on. The definition of war is very important. Calling things kinetic action is a disservice to our soldiers. You weren’t really wounded in war; you don’t have a medal of honor for war; you have a medal of honor for a kinetic action. If our predicate is that we can remove someone because we say they weren’t really elected, you can see where it leads, and it leads to chaos. That’s why we have rules like the Constitution—so presidents can’t do whatever they want. This is the check and balance. For seventy years we’ve been going the wrong way. It isn’t just this president. It’s a debate worth having.

Poor Raymond. I’m the only one he has. Not that he needs anybody. Old Raymond has only enough soul to be able to tolerate two or three people in his life. I’m one of them. There’s a girl I think he weeps over after he locks the doors. There’s room for just about one more and he’ll be full up. I hope it’s you because having Raymond on your side is not unlike being backed up by the First Army.